Here's a :60 spot that'll flash you back to Schoolhouse Rock. It's called "A Little Change Will Do Us Good," released for Gulf Power by agency Luckie & Co. Animation by Z Animation/Dagnabit out of Atlanta. (Don't worry, there's nothing remotely Sheryl Crow-ish about it.)
The ad encourages citizens to save energy while demonstrating how Gulf Power is doing its part. Supporting efforts include print, outdoor and subsite ChangeWillDoUsGood.com, though that doesn't seem to be working right now. The ad campaign debuts Monday, so I'm positive the site'll be up by then.
Simple, G-rated, retro -- and consistent across media. Good stuff.
UPDATE: The folk at Luckie & Co. say the site will be up by tomorrow, fingers crossed.
In a rant worthy of the early, pre-corporate days here at Adrants, AgencySpy's Superspy (thank God she's back) rips into the assholes of, well, assholes whose twisted minds are still living on some early American Southern plantation and can't seem to realize "black folk" are not some alien race that just landed and that must continuously be probed and pigeonholed.
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An atrocious "Top Model" poster, a diabolically clever "Dexter" campaign, a witty "Chuck" ad, an insanely Candyland-looking "Biggest Loser" promo and an all-too-sleepy "Fringe" billboard are among the 25 best and worst fall TV "key art" ads bluntly critiqued and graded in a slideshow on Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed blog.
The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd tells us, "Project was inspired by sitting in LA traffic, looking at the annual fall deluge of TV ad billboards and thinking it might be interesting to review the most compelling ones."
Check it out here. One of my favorites, Gossip Girl is first up.
After the MIXX Conference and MIXX Awards, Adify hosted a party at Jay Z's 40/40 club which is a seriously cool place and rocked. Not just a bar, not just a club, the place has several theme rooms that are like large living rooms. One features a vertical chess board. Another is all about billiards. Another, called the ESPN room is, well, all about ESPN and sports. And another is for serious cigar smoker. It's one of the best venues I've seen for a party like this.
And can we talk about pillows and couches? The place is full of them; enough to furnish twenty house. Bottle service was afloat in one of the rooms. Avid pool sharks took over the pool tables. Tunes were spun and food was passed. Dear ad:tech exhibitors/sponsors: have one of your parties here.
I ran into Deep Focus VP of Publicity Christian Berges, Millward Brown VP of Strategic Services Doron Wesly, MoVoxx CEO Chief Mobilizer Alec Andronikov and the lovely gigya Advertising Sales Manager Jacqueline Gerber. For all the juicy, visual goodness, see the party photo album here.
On Monday and Tuesday during Advertising Week, the IAB held its MIXX Conference and Awards. All the usual suspects where there are the Crown Plaza in mid-town Manhattan for the event. Adify, Laredo Group, Star Media, Microsoft, VideoEgg, ValueClick and many others. Of particular note was VideoEgg's Lauren Rogers who dressed herself in a yellow chicken costume for the ntire two days of the show. Cuteness. (And yes, VideoEgg advertises on Adrants)
In one panel Heroes creator Tim Kring talked about how the web played (and still plays) a big role in the show bit only for promotional purposes but as an integral part of the show's plotline as well as a platform for new and separate plot lines. Kring acknowledges the internet has drastically changed how traditional television is consumed, how viewership ratings have been negatively affected and how new audience have found the show and are viewing without turning on the television set - which challenges Nielsen to no end.
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"Red Alert 3 Remix," a promotional video for EA's Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, is the fruit of a partnership between DraftFCB and remix artist CB Shaw. The latter interspersed offbeat Hollywood icons with references to 'net memes and gaming footage -- all to the tune of Hell March, the track used in the opening sequence to the first Red Alert. Good way to draw legacy gamers back into the hype, though many will probably feel alienated by the invasion of Planet Hollywood.
But the line-up is pop culture genius. Jenny McCarthy, Gemma Atkinson, George Takei, Jonathan Pryce, Andrew Divoff, Peter Stormare, Tim Curry, JK Simmons, Kelly Hu, Autumn Reeser, and Ivana Milicevic have all been enlisted as characters in the game.
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In the realm of contextual fuckery, it's not always the advertisers that screw up. Sometimes it's the "legit" content providers themselves.
Case in point: on Monday morning, Culture Grrl woke up to find her copy of The New York Times wrapped in some kind of ad jacket for NBC-TV's new season.
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European mobile carrier Orange has this pay-as-you-go program that lets users define their own reward system. To promote it, Fallon/London tapped Reuben Sutherland of Joyrider, who came up with "Grabber."
In the spot above, transparent orange balloons, shaped like random animals, float enchantedly up toward the skylight of a factory building. (This setting was labeled "timeless," which I guess is true, given that we never quite run out of deserted warehouses.)
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My sister, who's way into video games, sent me to YouTube.com/ExperienceWii, where users can watch footage from Wario Land: Shake It!.
The :45 video had major nostalgic appeal. I remember playing Wario games on Super NES and even on Virtual Boy -- where, in addition to wreaking havoc on a titillating infrared world, Wario also wreaked havoc on my vision.
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Riffing off The Vagina Monologues, Philips launched the Bodygroom Manalogues, a web campaign where a chiseled, slightly scruffy guy performs inconsequential rants -- most related to body hair -- under poor light. Submit your own "manalogue" to see if it's worthy of web staging.
To curb any lingering speculation about what the campaign is for, a Philips razor hovers casually in the lower left-hand corner. Mousing over it makes the razor stand to attention -- decidedly phallic -- and freezes the video.
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