The promise of the extraordinary. The surprise of something new. The power to bring change. It's... It's... It's... Life Changing Box, a Lowe-created site and Facebook game that involves a box, co-ordinated game play and prizes. Beginning today and running for a month, no one's saying who it's for right now so, if you care, you're just going to have to play the game and wait.
It's all fairly intricate but here are some overview points from the release: - There are 10 boxes total in the game
- To gain possession of a box, users use a currency called a Touch
- All players get 24 "Touches" per day
- Each Touch enters the player into a Round
- At the beginning of each Round, the box will randomly jump to one of the players who entered that Round
- The player given the box holds it for the entirety of the Round, which lasts between 30 minutes and 8 hours, randomly decided by the application
- If the box doesn't open in a Round for the player, a new Round will begin and everyone must Touch the box again to participate
- 20 prizes will be awarded with values ranging from $400 to $14,000
- If you invite a friend to the application and they win, you win a duplicate prize
Let's hope it is actually life changing and not some lame promotion for some lame brand. All the details are here, the box is here and the game is here.
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In "School," a Greenpeace ad by DDB/Paris, a teacher poses this question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Her students' responses are laced with guilt-inducing grownup undercurrents: climate worries, health concerns and capitalist gusto conceived in ecological exploitation. Fascinating.
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Take Back the Tour -- not to be confused with Take Back the Night, though it wishes to be taken just as seriously -- is a movement that aims to "champion [Tour de France] riders who compete clean, while giving a platform ... to [their] passionate fan base."
More to the point, it reminds bike junkies that VERSUS (the sponsor!) is "the exclusive cable television home of the Tour de France."
"Show me another sport that's as tough, as demanding and as epic in its grandeur, grit and beauty than the Tour de France, but it's a competition that has seemingly lost its way over the past few years," said SVP Bill Bergofin of Marketing and Promotions for VERSUS. "[This] campaign ... will provoke a dialogue ... which will hopefully help to restore the Tour to its glory."
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- David Griner of AdFreak reveals the promotional origins of that one office freakout video. You should thank him; it involved interpreting Russian. (Well, no, not really.) Also, Angelina Jolie is a factor. Collective ooOooOooh.
- Traffic scores the $185 million Mitsubishi account. Meanwhile, the Michelin Man gets cozy with TBWA\Chiat\Day. Awwww.
- Beef and vegetable not doing the job? Treat yourself to cock flavoured soup mix. Just like mama used to make.
- France's Le Figaro was given promotional access to As if Nothing Happened, the latest album by Carla Bruni, the only First Lady we've ever seen naked. Her musical interpretation of Nicolas Sarkozy: "You are my junk. More deadly than Afghan heroin. More dangerous than Colombian white ... My guy, I roll him up and smoke him." SRSLY?
- Renetta McCann is "not joining the Obama campaign -- in any manner." Well, Renetta, Peter denied Jesus not once, not twice, but thrice. That didn't make them any less chummy.
New ad out for Polaroid's "Free the Photos" campaign, which promotes the PoGo instant mobile printer. The phones go marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah.
Nifty. But the secret hope is that the video will go viral. My money's on "hell no" (or the more diplomatic "it's unlikely"). Cut down to :30, it'd make an okay TV ad, though.
So we have two conference passed to the Generational Communications 2008 X + Y + Boomers conference to be held June 19 from 1:30P to 6P at the Graduate Center/CUNY on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The conference will examine generational usage of the Internet and how that usage has changed over the years.
If you're interested in going the first two people who email generational@adrants.com will get the passes.
- It seems things are so bad at BBDO, employees are stealing from one another.
- Publicis laid off ten percent of its IT staff.
- Element 79 lays off 30, and 20 quit? So goes the rumor. Nothing confirmed. Repeat after me. There is no recession. There is no recession. There is no recession. Positive thinking, people!
- Oh, and JumpStyle? Tweeted about it yesterday. AgencySpy commented. Yes, it's destined to be the next most copied ad concept.
Alisa Leonard points to a video that explains social media to CMOs in plain English.
Perhaps worried about Lexus poaching the literary crowd, BMW released an ad where Kerouac's On the Road is the star.
Feels a little Moulin Rouge-ish. You know, with the fast-paced prose and the music, the random intrusions of hitchhiking bands and too many cars and, at some point, a horse. (The pressie calls it "vibrating and action-packed." Which sounds a lot like an ad for a very expensive sex toy, actually.) I didn't like it at first, but after five or six watches I found it almost breathtaking.
The spot went live on Barcelona-based Agosto.tv and will also run on television. It's supposedly the first ad to be broadcast in HD to the Spanish market.
Voice-over text from On the Road is below.
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Apparently a thing called the Mac Monkey needs freeing. (He's "starved of creative stimulation." Guess he hasn't discovered his own poo yet. Also, why does he have people fingers?)
Intended to increase subscriptions to Creative Review Magazine, Free the Mac Monkey was conceived by London-based STEEL, which sought to distract us from calling foul ("SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN RIP-OFF!") with the tasteful inclusion of early Steve Jobs wall art. And they almost succeeded. Well ... no, not really.
What? Wait? Flash mobs? That's so...four years ago. Oh but wait. We're talking about advertising here. Not exactly the industry that latches onto trendlets in a timely manner. But since the press release also dubs the stunt "performance art," I guess it's OK.
To promote Taco Bell's Fruitista Freeze, Philadelphia's LevLane hired actors costumed in iced-over beachwear with their skin tinted blue who would freeze in position for hours while a support team outside Citizens Bank Park last week during an MLB Phillies home game handed out coupons for the frozen tropical beverage. Also, a flash mob in street clothes would do the same for a few minutes.
Because the stunt was, apparently, so successful and because, it seems, LevLane is so nice, the next day they did another stunt for free. Last Thursday during lunch, all agency employees wore orange t-shirts and walked to Philadelphia's City Hall. On cue, the majority froze in place while a few others handed out more Frutista Freeze coupons. Ten minutes later the mob thawed, walked to nearby Love Park and refroze.
So there you have it. The flash mob lives on. Or is it performance art? Hmm.
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