You may not know this, but there is a professional women's football league here in America and their season starts next weekend.
Pittsburgh agency GarrisonHughes, which promises big agency experience without the big agency bar tabs (doesn't sound like a lot fun), is handling a campaign for the "world champion" Pittsburgh Passion...a team that will passionately destroy you and any remnant of your masculinity if you make fun of them.
The copy is cute and the ad is a great use of a stock photography and, to top it all off, we've all learned that there is a professional women's football league.
Win, win, win.
Power Panel: The Internet Economy. It's an amalgam of nonsense. What's a power panel (Ariel asks)? What does it mean to discuss the internet economy?
It turns out discussing the internet economy is a lot like discussing the US economy. Conversation goes in circles, common frets are repeated to a fever pitch, and the most influential players tread shallow water.
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It's Noise Awareness Day today...or at least that is what the good people at Electrolux, who are launching a new campaign featuring their quieter appliances, are saying. No, I don't know how to be any more aware of noise either.
Electrolux even has a a blog about the campaign, though it is updated about as often as Bob Garfield's.
I am, personally, am very noise aware, both of the wheezing of my soon-to-die refrigerator (luckily, as a bachelor, all that is in there is Sierra Nevada, Poland Spring and some old pieces of cheese) and of the newlywed couple who has just moved in next door. We share a bedroom wall. The decibels are far too high.
Electrolux can at least help me with the first problem.
On my way to work today, I passed three Sovereign Bank employees wheeling around outside City Hall on Segways, handing out flyers. And not just any Segways, comically branded white & red Sovereign Bank Segways. It's part of Sovereign's spring marketing campaign to tell people about their $150 incentive to open checking accounts.
Now my colleague Amanda Mooney thought the Segways were a brilliant marketing gimmick only if your marketing goal was to make your brand look old and stodgy, and normally I would agree with her, but ever since Alexander Ovechkin & the Washington Capitals turned a Segway tour around DC into a hilarious media opportunity, I've been in favor of Segway marketing. Hey, they may look ridiculous, but at least we pay attention to them.
[Ed. We commented on Ford's new Drive One tagline earlier in March. Now Advertising Age comments. Now, we comment again.] Just when you think that re-designed cars that actually look good and drive well - step forward Ford Focus and Chevy Malibu - might position the American carmakers to start winning back the market share and brand battle that they have been so abjectly losing to their Japanese rivals, AdAge reports on Ford's new campaign, called "Drive One".
Have you driven a Ford lately, anyone?
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Golf is kind of boring to watch. Go ahead, disagree with me in the comments section if you like, but everything about watching the sport on TV is sedated: the players, the crowds and even the announcers.
Watching Phil Mickelson in the new Crowne Plaza campaign by Fallon makes the sleep-inducing nature of golf telecasts all the more disappointing.
He is really funny.
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Tired of other brands like Philips Norelco getting all the plaudits for groundbreaking and edgy work, Gillette has decided to get in to the "sex sells " game.
How have they done it? With a played-out green screen website that "teaches" guy how to kiss via a female teacher with her shirt halfway open (subtle, that one) and a creepy old man who may very well own a windowless white van.
Needless to say, I'm not particularly high on this idea.
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Did you ever see that spot where Vinny Pastore beats the crap out of a printer, then gets a Kodak EasyPrint? This is part of Kodak TWO-OH, a bid to cash in on modernity by a brand that's been around since the beginning of time.
CMO Jeff Hayzlett of Kodak, who led the ad:tech opening keynote today, has an inferiority complex. He thinks he's too big. His suits are undoubtedly XXXL, his expressions cup-runneth-over, and his swaggers could alter the course of human minnows in a crowded hallway.
But in the hallowed sanctum, Jeff's big views and irrepressible personality are forcing an old brand to learn new tricks.
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Today, my classmate Zach noticed this Zyrtec ad on telephone poles all over Boylston and Tremont street in Boston.
The flyer reads:
"Missing 2 Hours. Last Seen: While waiting for Claritin to start working. If found please call: 1-800-4-Zyrtec"
Not that this is any sort of scientifically-vetted research but considering Zach took the time to take it off a dirty Boston telephone pole and pass it around and show his friends, it definitely seems to have made an impact... and it achieved that effect without shutting the city down like other Boston-based guerrilla efforts. It was cool to see how simple copy scribbled with Sharpie on plain white paper taped to telephone poles around the city had the ability to cut through the clutter of its competitors' glossy ads.
We do it with cars. Why not with people? After all, most people want to know what they'll be riding before they ride it. The woman in this commercial for Auto Trader Canada isn't taking any risks before commencing her date.
Two other spots which follow similar scenarios are here and here.
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