To encourage drivers to make sure they have the proper oil in their cars, Castrol has launched billboards in the UK which deliver personalized messages to passing cars.
Using cameras, which will be positioned by the side of the road, driver's registration information will be read matching them to the make and model of car via the DVLA database. A message to the driver with the correct oil recommendation for their car's engine will then be flashed on digital billboards further down the road.
Big Brother creepiness aside, it's never a bad thing to remind car owners what type of oil they should be using. Of course, the right type of oil doesn't have to be Castrol bu that's nitpicking, right? This is advertising. Everything's biased in this world.
Here's a video explaining how the whole thing will work.
OK then. What's Advertising Week without the Pièce de résistance of advertising? Nothing. So it's our duty on this fine sunny (at least in New York) Monday to present yet another sex-laced advertising campaign. This one's from Barcelona-based Suigeneris for La Condoneria. Yea, it's a condom store and the campaign's called Rub-It. Yea, you read that right. Rub it. Which kinda makes sense for a condom campaign, right? After all, that's what you do after you put one on.
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So it's Advertising Week this week and what's the most important thing about the week? Icons and slogans, of course. Today at 6PM in Times Square, this year's Walk of Fame Inductees will be announced. In the past, the Geico Caveman, Juan Valdez, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, the Geico Gecko and Tony the Tiger have been Walk of Fame Winners.
In terms of past slogan winners, M&M's' "Melts in Your Hands, Not in Your Mouth", Verizons' "Can You Hear Me Now", FedEx's "When it Absolutely Positively Has to be There Overnight" and Wendy's "Where's the Beef" have been named.
So if you care about the really important stuff in advertising like this stuff, stay glued to Times Square for the news today. And if, like the rest of us, you could care less who wins this folly, just take a walk around Manhattan. There's bound to be a self-centric, ego-fueled ad industry party somewhere on the island.
Love in the Dumps has the unlikely, and possibly masochistic, ambition of becoming the non-dating site of dating sites. The homepage makes a show of highlighting everything we hate about romantic relations: a section titled Date Dispatch headlines a manifesto on white guys that date Asian girls, Pop Goes the Culture reviews "Hud" 46 years late, and Featured Impersonals showcase various users by antidepressent stats, among other things.
We like the Dr. Damage and Bitch Whispers sections best.
AAAAANYwho, to promote the site, a series of videos are hitting YouTube under the cheerful premise relationship retard. Witness a bunch of for-the-most-part dateable people proclaim, with glee, all the ways in which they'll ruin your life after a couple of months' nesting-time. One will smash you with sarcasm; another vows he'll probably leave you for the neighbour.
If only you could gauge that stuff beforehand. But, given that you can't, might as well admit that you, too, are prone to some retarded relationship shit.
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- Allan Gray graciously exploits the late James Dean.
- Denmark pulls tourism vid that (apparently?) depicts it as slutty.
- Vanksen's second annual Viral Film Festival is now accepting entries. Dust off your amateur vid brainchild, that tops short film you did, or an audiovisual tale whose launch got shafted, and turn it in before October 23rd. The Festival goes down in Paris on November 26th.
- GOOG to open DoubleClick ad exchange to AdWords and AdSense customers.
- Second Life sued by sex toy guy for sex toy knock-offs. Yeah. Virtual ones. We have no idea.
Fresh out of Singapore, and under the catchy slogan "Safe no matter what you make," Play-Doh's launched a series of magazine ads that depict weapons of suburban destruction made out of the claylike substance.
We like it, but only because we've relinquished all ties to the Kingdom of Heaven. On the serious though, the ads are running in at least one alt weekly rag that caters to free-thinking cafe-goers that are okay with this kind of humor without necessarily being god-awful parents.
See variants below the drop.
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Milk's seen a fine trajectory: from nondescript white cereal enhancer to mustache marks on famous faces.
Ladies and gents, we have come a long way from the Dixie Chick days. In partnership with X-Men Origins, Wolverine's whipping out his indestructible talons for the Body By Milk campaign.
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So Wheaties, the wholesome man's man cereal that once sported Michael Jordan on the box, has rebranded to reflect our taurine-powered, chrome-enhanced times.
Powering down on all that orange, the new Wheaties box is Basic Black with a metallic new brand name: FUEL. Just above is a casual (and yet not) assembly of sporty dudes with features that bring both Star Trek and Axe to mind. Yes, simultaneously.
No word on whether the Bom Chika Wah-Wah will be penetrating TV ads; we just hope all that FUEL doesn't manifest itself on unwitting tastebuds.
Make the Logo Bigger has a good assessment of why this approach sucks for cereal. In contrast, Plaid's Brand Flakes for Breakfast admits the box'll stand out -- that is, until all the other breakfasts of champions start following suit.
HBO follows up on the ridiculously-lauded Voyeur campaign with Imagine.
Visually, it's a storytelling mashup of the social cloud and the Mac Cube: a series of stories are told from different perspectives, and you'll need to see all four sides of each to get a complete picture of what's going on.
Production quality is, as always, Home Box Office-caliber. The first one we saw was Art Heist, and it sucked us into its drama-ridden tentacles with a quickness -- once we got the damn site to load. (Small price to pay for good ol'-fashioned passive entertainment.)
Also, doesn't seem to work on Firefox. Fix, somebody, fix!
To convey the endless possibilities to those choosing to avail themselves of Converse's new customizable sneakers, Anomoly created a collection of mutant (customized, get it?) animals which will appear on banners and on wild postings throughout New York.
The work is freaky but interestingly original. You can see it all here.
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