During the Wednesday night episode of American Idol, The United States Marine Corps will debut a commercial called America's Marines which supports the Our Marines website that tells the stories of current and former Marines and why they serve. The site also contains documentaries of the public's interaction with the Marines during the filming of the commercial and during other encounters. It's the website, more than the commercial itself, that offers a deeper look into the life of a Marine as well as America's appreciation for them even if they don't agree with the politics behind their deployment.
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Now here's an award show annual we love. Bluntly pointing out the fact you're either good enough to have won an award and be in the book or you suck and you're not, Arnold crafted an interactive annual of sorts for this year's One Show Annual. Along with the book, will come stickers you can affix to the front and spine of the book listing the pages you and your work are on or, if you aren't so lucky, a sticker that reads simply, "Not In." Oh the cruelty of it all! But hey, you know some of us need our inflated egos smashed every once in a while, right?
These two videos from DraftFCB Hamburg examine the idiocy of focus groups and why it's silly to rely too heavily on them. In the videos, one caveman moderator and three caveman panelists turn great ideas like fire and the wheel into useless inventions no one would ever need. It's humorous enough and hits home perfectly the notion a bunch of random people will, undoubtedly, kill a good idea every time.
If you're into the Phoenix Suns, you might like this new website called Suns Locker Room. On the site, you can snoop into player's lockers, check out Head Coach Mike D'Antoni's office, turn on his TV and read his email, and...yes, see the Suns Gorilla dry his ass with a towel. And other stuff but we got tired of stating at the flickering "loading" graphic every time we clicked something.
The Favorite Website Awards judging is complete. The results for the group's site of the year award are in and damn if my fellow judges didn't side with me! I voted for the infectiously engaging HBO Voyeur site but, apparently, more than half of the other judges thought the Goodby Silverstein/North Kindom-created Get the Glass site was better.
While good, Get the Glass just didn't hold my attention the way Voyeur did. But, and this is important, it took quite a while to get my attention in the first place which may have been one of the reasons it wasn't picked as a winner. Get the Glass delivers its goods quickly. The HBO Voyeur site is a slow build but once you're in, you're hooked and you can't stop. That's why I voted for it and, perhaps, why others didn't.
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Are you one of the cool kids? Did you get asked by the Art Directors Club to be on their jury for the organization's 87th annual awards? No? Don't feel bad. Neither did we. But we can still have fun. Go grab the nearest can of spray mount and we'll stick their hands to their temporarily pompous little asses. Kidding!
We love our fellow industry mates and we wish them well as they pour monotonously through thousands of entries ultimately assigning random grades as the list becomes endlessly frustrating and they scream, "Make it stop!" Kidding! We wish them well as they peruse the world's most beautiful advertising work and jealously exclaim, "Damn, I wish I did that!" Not really kidding.
Anyway, if you want to know who will be responsible for your potential appearance in the Club's nice fat annual coffee table book, here's the list of people to bride. Kidding!
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There seems to be some debate regarding the meaning of the boss in this Subway commercial reacting to his employees ass by saying "oochee mama." When the employee asks the boss if he can just photocopy his ass in response to the boss's request for some random lunch receipt, we get that the ad is poking fun at the insanity of expense reports and the ridiculousness of requiring intelligent, grown adults account for every last cent they spend. But we wonder what exactly what the copywriters meant when they had the boss say "oochee mama." Is he gay and admiring the guy's ass? Is he just freaked out at the fact someone is mooning him? Whomever wrote this ad, please explain.
Guys, prepare to squirm. Prepare to clutch your privates like you've never clutched them before. Here's a movie that is sure to make you wince for the entire length of the film and every time you have sex for the rest of your life. Ladies, prepare to unleash your darkest, most horrific revenge fantasies as you recall that one time you perhaps found yourself with a guy that just wouldn't take no for an answer.
We give you Teeth, a movie about, well, just watch the trailer. There's not much promotion surrounding this movie and probably for good reason.
And if you haven't heard, here's Trumpet Groups riff on the RFP, its Request for Problem. The agency, changing the direction this sort of communication usually flows, wants marketers to submit their problem to which the agency will reply with a solution...for free. Of course, Trumpet hopes their solutions are so good the marketer will call for more work and pay next time around.
It's an interesting approach. Or you could just label it yet another example of agency laziness, in this case making the client do all the upfront new business legwork. But we're sure that's not the case here.
Men have fantasies. Lots of fantasies. And We're not just talking about sex here. In this new commercial for J.P. Morgan Chase from Mcgarrybowen, we see a man doing the James Bond thing to get a stolen credit card back. But, as we find out, he's only doing it in his mind while taking a call from Chase alerting him to some fraud on his card.
As with most male fantasies, it's all about action, car chases death defying stunts and fancy footwork. Nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact guys in these sorts of commercial always seem to be, well, average looking. Very un-James Bond-like, in fact. While many commercials are filled with stunningly beautiful or mouth waveringly sexy women, we can't seem to get rid of the Verizon Dad and his ilk. Perhaps, not unsurprisingly, its because the guys who create these commercials (and it is all guys in this case) love to look at beautiful women but want nothing to do with any man who might be better looking than them. So, we get Mr. Average who always seems to end up with Mrs. Amazingly Hot.
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