The comments on AdWeek's Ad of the Day review of Old Navy's new Chandelier-created ad featuring MADtv comic Debra Wilson sum it up perfectly.
"Interesting. I didn't laugh once. Nevertheless, I think this actually COULD be funny if they cut it to a :30 and simplify by focusing on the fake wand sounds gag. That's the only comedic idea I see here. The rest of this spot is just trying way too hard."
"Meh. You can tell the client added the ending."
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Oh yea. Here's a great concept for a Diet Mountain Dew ad. Let's get Dale Earnhardt Jr. to tear the crap out of nature when he's called into action by a hunter's "Dale Call." That about sums up the Mountain Dew brand: Drink us and you, too, can become a lunatic to whom the term "tread lightly" has no meaning.
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Really? Really? Have we not seen enough silly iterations of the whole "what if the real world were like social media" stunts? This latest "social media buffoon in public" schtick comes to us from South African mobile provider Cell C which thinks, well, we're not even quite sure.
We suppose the Ogilvy Johannesburg-created ad asks the question "what would happen if you ran out of data?" Well, you'd probably run around town like an idiot slapping Like stickies on everything and creepily following girls down the sidewalk. Or maybe plastering the wall with Polaroids. Or poking complete strangers.
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Hmm. Is this even funny? Is this even good advertising? Check out all that product placement! And how about that stupid red sticker covering the Apple logo on the guy's MacBook. We'll be placing this squarely within the forced fun category and not really all that worth of College Humor work. Alas, that's exactly what it is. Doritos might be bold but this stunt isn't.
Here's the problem with JetBlue's new Mullen-created commercial for JetBlue. No matter how you sugarcoat it (bags fly free, most legroom in coach, unlimited snacks, free TV, friendly flight attendants), flying still sucks. Know why? Because people refuse to pay a lot to fly so the airlines have no choice but to pack as many people into a plane as possible and give them as few "perks" as they can.
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Microsoft has, today, pulled a video it posted Friday entitled " A fly on the wall in Cupertino" in which two actors present to "T", aka a fictitious TIm Cook (which is this video actually looks more like Steve Jobs), what they've been working on leading up to last week's Apple iPhone event.
The video has been pulled from official channels but still floats around and can be viewed. Of the video, Microsoft issued a statement which read,"The video was intended to be a light-hearted poke at our friends from Cupertino. But it was off the mark, and we've decided to pull it down."
There were seven videos in all. All have been pulled.
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It's been a while since we've witnessed a contextual advertising screw up. While we're sure they still happen all the time and people have, for the most part, just become immune to them, it's still intriguing to see them pop up from time to time.
Adrants reader Micah Donahue sent us this mobile screenshot of a Progressive ad banner above a CNN story about today's shooting inside a D.C naval facility. In the banner, Progressive's Flo can be seen aiming a gun at the viewer. Of course it's not an actual gun but the placement of the ad above a story about a shooting is, at best, disconcerting.
To be fair, it's not even clear whether or not this is a contextually served ad. It's appearance could be completely random. Even so, an ad that has an image which appears to look at though someone is aiming a gun at you is probably not the best creative execution (no pun intended) to have in your rotation.
A new ad for Chinese smartphone company Oppo has released an ad touting the fact their new phone has a touch screen on the back as well as the front. To convey this point, the brand took the easy route and chose to make an analogy between the back of the phone and a lady's back.
So the result is an ad featuring a bare back accompanied with the headline, "Don't just touch the front, the back is also interesting." The ad is finished with "Rear Touch Panel. A brand new user experience.
Really? Seriously?
Oh and that's not all. Reportedly, he brand has also rolled out an ad featuring a picture of toilet paper and the headline, "Easy to use with one hand so you can get busy with the other one..."
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It's really quite sad when soda brands even remotely imply their products approach something any sane person would consider healthy. Oh sure, we all want to consume a soda from time to time but to imply the crap carries any health benefits is ludicrous.
But that does not appear to have concerned BBDO Dusseldorf when they created this poster campaign for Pepsi which is said to deliver "refreshment and energy to all parts of the body." The image appears to be a body's veins and capillaries which are colored so as to mimic the brand's color scheme.
It doesn't take much more than a cursory Google search to determine study after study have determined soda is simply not healthy. Yes, it won't kill you if you consume it in moderation but for those who drink it like coffee on a daily basis, it would appear the prognosis is not good. Via.
To be clear, we bear no ill will towards any agency's attempt to self promote. OK, that's not exactly true. Why? Because when agencies decide to self-promote, the results are often disastrous. See Agency.com. See SapientNitro. See Bold Ogilvy. And the list goes on.
Part of the problem in these situations, of course, is that agencies are under increased scrutiny because they are expected to be even more creative when they are unencumbered by client involvement. But, if history is any guide, client involvement just might not be such a bad thing after all when it comes to agency self-promotion.
The other part of the problem is that we, as an industry, can't help help but trash the competition every chance we get. The moral of the story, then, is that no matter what sort of self-promotion an agency does, it's likely to be met with sarcasm, snark, cynicism and mockery.
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