Sometimes driving alone and all the mind wandering that comes with it can be a therapeutic experience. Other times it can just suck, be boring or make you want to fall asleep. Driver Assist Connect, a gadget that projects a holographic image to the passenger seat of your car aims to keep you company, keep you awake and, in your absence, help prevent people from stealing your car.
The product could come in handy when driving to work alone allowing one to scoot down the less jammed, two-per-vehicle express lane. It could also cause problems when inadvertently switched on while driving past one's significant other. Or, conversely, it could aid in the creation of jealousy, an occasional but much-needed card in the relationship game.
The ads themselves are of the cheesy infomercial variety variety; poorly acted, oddly scripted and produced with the finesse of a sledgehammer.
Tapping into the truism that one's phone is, in a sense, one's life, Nokia is out with an interesting online promotion for what appears to be a new phone. Two playful videos (Anna, Luca) do the montage thing to illustrate the lives of Anna, Jade and Luca, all of whom, of course, have accompanying Facebook pages.
On the promotional site, somebodyelsesphone, where the symbiotic relationship between a person and their phone is further explored, people can sign up to be notified via email when the phone will be unlocked...in other words, released.
Or, or, or...it's not a promotion for a new phone, rather, a playful promotion that attempts to make everyone love Nokia even more. Or hate their friends for even thinking about stealing a person's little secrets out of their phone. In 5.5 days, we will know. W+K London created the work.
Just as various groups did the car crash thing over and over and over and over and over again, it seems we're in for a graphic workplace safety trend as well. Following last year's effort from Canadian group Prevent-it, Australia's WorkSafe Victoria is out with a series of ads in which a guy misuses a nail gun, a cook carries a pot of boiling water that's too heavy and a woman has a bit of trouble using a bagel slicer.
The focus of the campaign urges workers to ask for help if they don't know how to use a particular piece of equipment. The ads will air in two versions. One will will air prior to 8:30PM as a PG version. After that, the full blown gross out version will air.
What would happen if a Thickburger jumped into a cold swimming pool? "Shrinkage" -- one ad among many for Hardee's Little Thickburger. Despite its focus on (small) size, (wide) breadth and general meatiness, it is radically devoid of gigantic titty jokes or other innuendos.
Each spot sports its own overly cute Thickburger-vs-Little-Thickburger comparison and ends with the same glib line: "It's a Thickburger, but little."
If Daria ever went into advertising, a slogan like that would've been her magnum opus.
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Four Playboy playmates hit the slopes -- in the buff! -- on a set of limited-edition Burton "Love" snowboards.
Moms with kids are predictably unhappy -- and, just as predictably, a youngish guy with Alex Bogusky hair goes on the record with a nonchalant "They're just naked bodies."
"We just keep saying 'Maverick, Maverick, Maverick' until that's all they hear!" snaps a fictional McCain campaign strategist. "It's not that hard." Because why write a jingle when you've got a word with the force of a heavy blunt instrument -- a word voters will remember long after all the other propaganda's melted together?
Dubbed "A Fly on the Wall," this :33 bit of masterpiece theatre was allegedly funded by Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein in the flesh, then uploaded onto YouTube from their own computers. Well, maybe not the latter.
Not the first "maverick" bitchslap we've seen in recent days. I'm just glad they didn't use children.
More where that came from, and good stuff too, though all this blatant Obama-loving has begun alienating some potential voters.
Just in time for Halloween, Doritos launches Hotel 626, a haunted virtual hotel that's only open between 6pm and 6am. (You'll literally have to make a reservation if you try to penetrate it before then.)
Users are encouraged to visit the site in the dark with headphones, a camera and a microphone, which can be used to complete challenges. The hotel is 13 rooms big, including a morgue and a dark room (like, for developing photos?).
Part of Doritos' sponsor-heavy online universe, Snack Strong Productions, the effort will be promoted on specially marked bags of Doritos. By Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.
Each year Evian releases a designer bottle to highlight its commitment to "chic sophistication." 2007's splurge of choice was by Christian Lacroix; now meet Jean Paul Gaultier's Pret-a-Porter 2009 edition. Get it tout seule or in big-ass boxes of 12 for just $118. It's a steal!
Can't afford it? No worries. To maximize the likelihood of cashflow from every frivolous spender alive, Evian's got a slew of other appetite-slicking vessels that will make dehydrated friends writhe with envy, even while smirking under their Botox.
They that brought you $10 facial spray (now sponsor-friendly!) and bottled water for children also debuted the regal Palace bottle, complete with its own metal pourer and coaster. (Comes in packs of 12. Coaster, pourer and self-esteem sold separately.)
- A handful of rich-ass celebrities use reverse psychology to cajole MySpace users into voting. What, does Jennifer Aniston not do it for you? Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio's poverty-ridden excuse for a blog will.
- The wife of David Warthen, founder of Ask.com, is facing tax evasion charges on money she made while working as a hooker to pay for law school.
- Three thought-provoking reasons not to blog anonymously if you're gonna blog at all.
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by Angela Natividad
Oct- 7-08
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Cause, Commercials, Online, Opinion, Packaging, Political, Strange, Trends and Culture, Video
- In a bid to woo former CP+B client Pearl Izumi, Boulder agency Karsh/Hagan launched a poster campaign slamming agencies that drop smaller clients for bigger ones.
- With "silent" ad, KFC offers $20,000 to the United Nations World Food Program if presidential candidates address the issue of world hunger during the debate Tuesday in Nashville.
- Smirnoff is out with a new commercial which has two trapeze artists making a drink in mid air while performing at the circus.
- Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has joined the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors Consumer Education Foundation and TD AMERITRADE Institutional to launch the Your Money Bus Tour.
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