Treehugger sent us news that the ad at left, which depicts a Volkswagen Polo Blue Motion chained to a bike rack, violates EU law by failing to disclose fuel consumption and CO2 emissions data.
And it isn't just the one piece. All creative from VW's current campaign, which promotes its "environmentally friendly technology," is being challenged by the Association for Protection of the Environment and Nature of Germany (BUND) as illegal under the above stipulation.
Not to say the VWs aren't actually fuel efficient; apparently, though, you can get your wrist slapped for not making it clear enough. Weird world.
Peroni's PR dude sent us the pitch for "Calendario," a new campaign tasked with depicting Peroni as a "timeless classic" and "Italian style in a bottle." (Well, hell. If you can get Italian style in a bottle, I suppose you would find it in the liquor aisle of your local grocer.)
We were then given a link to the Peroni website, where we found zip-zero on "Calendario." What we did find was Peroni's branded rendition of La Dolce Vita: 60 seconds long, stuffed with Peroni billboards and loaded with second-rate models that lack the five o'clock shadow and fleshy life of Federico Fellini's original cast.
That's what you'll find here -- if you can wait long enough for the damn page to load.
I went to Toronto last weekend and attended a dinner party hosted by Shannon Stephaniuk of Glossy Inc. If you're a blogger, a production company or one of her agency clients, you probably know her well. She's the PR person who actually presents advertising in a format journalists like (and cover lavishly):
(subject line.)
PICTURES!
LINK TO (DOWNLOADABLE) CREATIVE!
LINK TO CREDITS!
To other PR people: Why is this formula so hard to grasp? Just today I got a fucking one-page essay from Peroni's PR folk, pitching me on its new "Calendario" campaign, and then NOTHING. What, I have to email back to see the creative? Oh wait, there's a tiny link to the site right at the bottom near the fine(-as-hell!) print. Once I give my birthdate and location, I can hunt "Calendario" down myself -- if Peroni was smart enough to post it there at all. (What ho, it wasn't.)
But I digress.
The dinner party took place Friday night at Nyoob and featured a handful of Toronto-based media and ad people. The guestlist is posted here and so are the photos, if you want to see what havoc ensued.
Quotable highlights from the party are below.
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From what I can gather out of these spots, the only reason people swim out of Cuba is to pursue Matusalem Gran Reserva 15 Year Old Rum, which Fidel Castro expelled in 1959.
But the high seas can be treacherous. A shark comes and eats the rum, then eats the people, and Fidel is pleased. Meanwhile, the people inside the shark party with their liquor of choice.
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- Watch as Starbucks, flailing wildly, stumbles into smoothies.
- A company called Sojern has partnered with Delta, United, Continental, Northwest and US Airways to sell ad space on boarding passes printed off the 'net.
- It's another review site. The difference is, Culture Clique aspires to be the only review site you'll ever need or want. Think of it: review the iPhone, The Dark Knight, Twitter and Ana Karenina all from one place.
- Draft FCB is imploding, and its biggest antagonist is covering it with unrestrained gleeee. (Yeah, with four Es.) Well, what did you expect with nonsense like this?
- JWT keeps its hand in with a warm, fuzzy border patrol ad. Oh look, a little bunny girl on a bike.
Yea! Mad Men is returning but if you simply can't wait to wallow in the 1960's ad world, you get do so virtually in a New York city subway car, some of which have been designed on the interior to look like the television show. Too bad you'll never get the full effect what with the hundreds of people filling the cars obscuring the view...which could lead to another problem.
Right up there with Chevrolet and apple pie, Budweiser has always been quintessentially American. While it's unlikely too much will change, the brewer on Sunday accepted a $52 billion bid from Belgian brewer InBev SA. Upon approval, the deal makes InBev the world's largest brewer and the fourth largest CPG company in the world.
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Poor John McCain. The dude just continues to be trashed online. In a new video from the Service Employees International Union, McCain is trashed for supporting tax loopholes which make it financially attractive to buy and sell companies which often leads to lower wages and job cuts. The Union calls out McCain's support of the loopholes by comparing him to monsters from old Japanese movies.
Writing on AdFreak, David Giantasio points out some of the monsters come from the movie Gappa, the Triphibian Monster in which monsters weren't actually evil but simply became destructive after being misunderstood by people. And in a seemingly Republican-leaning comment, Giantasio closes with, "Just like John McCain."
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And they're bringing jetpacks.
Meh. I'm not sure what definitively killed this ad for me: the retro lightning effects, the radioactive squirrel ("Go forth and ROCK!"), or the sabre tooth tiger that doubled as a magic carpet.
Put together by Bent Image Labs for DDB, LA.
If you knew a vampire didn't need to feed on human blood to survive, would you let him sit next to you on the bus? That's the question behind this cheesy (but compelling) online campaign for True Blood, a new HBO series from Six Feet Under's Alan Ball.
Put together by Campfire -- the same zany folks that convinced you a sadistic witch lived in Maryland -- the effort tries drumming up controversy for a synthetic blood beverage called Tru Blood, which will liberate vampires from their need to feed on people and finally enable them to demand equal treatment among the living.
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