The Economist brought its dry, mischievous humour and trademark red to Dallas, TX for three days. Fake bulls -- labeled "Real Estate," "401(k)" and "Stock Market," respectively -- were propped up in the middle of an inflatable arena.
Across the bottom of the ring, alongside The Economist logo, is the question: "How long can you stay on?"
Thousands of people apparently saw; a few even tried riding them. You know how those Texans like their meat.
Playful, witty and wildly relevant. By BBDO/NY. Thanks to @haikalsiregar for pointing us to it.
Research. You gotta love it. It can support whatever point you want to make and it can reiterate important findings even if an almost identical study has been done prior resulting in the same findings.
More than fifteen years ago, Fortune (as well as many others over the years, one would assume) commissioned a study which found the money spent on marketing directly effect brand perception, stock market prices, cash flow and bond ratings.
These studies are great for agencies pitching marketers on brand-building campaigns that are easy to create, easy to manage and make the agency a lot of money without having to actually move any product or prove the campaign had any immediate effect. [Ed. I know. I used this strategy many times to get companies to spend boatloads of money on frivolous "branding" campaigns.]
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"Hi, honey, welcome to Coca-Cola Zero Headquarters."
We give you possible.cokezero.com, Coke Zero's sad attempt to compete with Pepsi Max -- "The diet drink for men!" -- for the waist-watching XY vote.
Gonna side with @BranislavPeric on this one: the execution is clean, with hardly any laggage and a nice flow from video intro to engagement tools; but there's nothing remotely Coca-Cola about it. It's a cheap silicon-enhanced take on a brand that's supposed to feel perpetually familiar, family-friendly, feel-good and G-rated for the most part.
Girl-on-girl intro-to-porn vibe and ditzy platitudes like "honey" aside, the tackiest part of the presentation is the loading period preceding the interactive environment. After you select an activity at digital Headquarters, you get the pleasure of watching the pelvises of both hostesses sway slowly in the background.
Thank North Kingdom when you're done rubbing the grease off your monitor.
Perhaps because they were sick and tired of being confused with a worldwide sandwich conglomerate, Philadelphia-based Gyro Worldwide is changing their name to...Quaker City Mercantile? Wait, what? Gyro/QCM is an ad agency right? So now they're shedding their sub shop image for...some kind of cereal-focused trading exchange?
People! We're in the marketing business, right? We're supposed to make it easy for people to know what brands are, what they stand for and what they do. Right? Right?
But maybe that's old school thinking because Gyro/QCM doesn't really want to be clearly defined as a traditional ad agency, rather, "a company that aims to produce much more than advertising." And that will do so by "drawing on Philadelphia's heritage...to recapture Philadelphia's mighty industrial past and weave a new version of this greatness into its future."
Wait, what? Now we're "weaving greatness?" WTF does that mean?
We give up.
Corona demonstrates how to make good use of the newspapers that've spent the last six months foretelling our economic doom, bleeding woe like a car crash we have to relive every. single. fucking. day.
And as for that BlackBerry that you no longer need because of ad spend-related job cuts? Here's what you can do with that.
Life's too short to throw our well-being out with the bathwater. Good chill material by Cramer-Krasselt, which also handled the media buy. Also impressively in keeping with Corona's longtime creative positioning: those lounge chairs, that sea, nicely-chilled bottle just within your reach.
Ahhh. We want beach.
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- BMW to serve as exclusive sponsor of Mad Men's season 3 premier.
- Cadbury Caramilk interpretive dance. Blame Saatchi.
- Something fun and new to add to your shit-to-worry-about annals: Twitter SEO.
- "Ikea releases more inner creepy."
- Amazon crowdsources TV ad campaign (via @martindave).
- Twitter makes the AP styleguide. This is not a test.
The music in Palm Pre's "Flow" feels Stephen Spielberg epic, but the concept of the ad itself is a little weird.
In "Flow," a woman saunters into an empty field, settles on a giant rock and starts futzing with her Palm Pre phone. At the same time, an entire army of orange-clad martial arts-inspired dancers appear around her, illustrating her big internal soliloquy with their unified movements.
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We were somewhere on Rue de Rivoli when we saw a print version of the image at left for coffee label Lavazza. Below the image of a feral woman clad in furs, her body hunched protectedly over two infants, an espresso cup clutched delicately in one hand, reads the tagline: "The Italian espresso experience."
Lavazza is the same brand that did the utterly carnal coffee-bean-grind prints two years ago.
After a bit of Googling we found out the image we saw is one of seven Annie Leibovitz-photographed prints for Lavazza's yearly Coffee Calendar, an artful and sexy tribute to a handful of Italian icons. The image at left is a reinterpretation of Colosseo & Lupa Capitolino and represents the January-February portions of the calendar.
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OMFG. Yes, OMFG. That's the only logical reaction to this commercial for the Comfort Wipe, the "revolutionary" new product that lets you wipe your ass without ever having to touch it or a piece of dirty toilet paper.
Dabitch is right when she wrote on Adland,"I predict that 'The first improvement of toilet paper as we know it since the 1880's!' and 'Get-a-grip' will be punchlines in late-night shows by next week, and finally topple 'I have fallen and I can't get up' & 'set it and forget it' from their thrones." Thrones. Funny, Åsk.
And if this doesn't stick, there's always "apply directly to the forhead."
Handbag designer Rachel Nasvik promotes fresh wares with an urban Quest for ladies that lust for free stuff.
96 of her handbags were hidden in public places around NYC, filled with girly things like lip gloss, bobby pins and personalized playlists; as well as a note spouting the campaign manifesto: "You didn't find this bag, this bag found you." Lucky finders can keep 'em.
Rachel's Twitter is loaded with cryptic clues about where the bags can be spotted; her blog also sports images of discovered ones.
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