Ball of String Captures Moment of Love

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Oh wow. This ad, capturing the precious moment between two people when they decide to ask and answer one of life's biggest questions which, in a big way, will determine how they live the rest of their lives together, is, by far, one of the best we've seen.

With nothing but a ball of string and some ingenuity, one man expresses his eternal love for the woman of his dreams. Love does, indeed, rock.

Created by The Richards Group for Zales, this commercial features music created specifically for the ad by Robert Francis. The song is entitled Don't Forget Love and was produced by PrimalScream Music Creative Director and EVP Nicole Dionne.

by Steve Hall    Oct-14-08    
Topic: Best, Commercials, Creative Commentary



Hatch Award Video Brings Clarity to Clutter 3.0

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We didn't make it to Boston's Hatch Awards this year and therefore we missed this hilarious introductory video created by Fort Franklin. In the video, we see the desktop of a creative seemingly hard at work developing the voiceover for the Hatch video itself.

All seems to go well until the desktop explodes with activity not far from the reality we all experience everyday as we try to work on one thing while endless distractions such as email, IM, stupid YouTube videos, Skype, iTunes updates and stupid pictures begin to bounce incessantly along the bottom of the desktop making actual work impossible. Revision after revision fails.

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by Steve Hall    Oct-14-08    
Topic: Agencies, Best, Industry Events, Trends and Culture



Highway Sings For Honda Civic

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While the stunt angered some Lancaster, CA resident, others came to love the "musical road" created by Honda which played the William Tell overture when cars drove over specially designed grooves on Lancaster's West Avenue K. While musical roads have been created before in Japan, it's quite new in America.

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by Steve Hall    Oct-13-08    
Topic: Best, Guerilla, Outdoor



Friday Best: The Faster the Speed, The Bigger The Mess

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May 6, 2007: With the simple but true tagline, "The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess," this :60, launched April 26, from Ireland's Road Safety Authority and Northern Ireland's Department of Environment delivers a powerful but simple message: The faster the speed, the bigger the mess. Entitled "Mess," the commercial is born from statistics that find 30 percent of Republic of Ireland and 24 percent of Northern Ireland road fatalities are due to excessive speed. The spot is part of an increasing trend towards the use of reality-based shock and brutal honesty to deliver the message.

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 9-08    
Topic: Best, Cause, Commercials



Friday Racy: That Hot Chick is Also a Human Being

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April 8, 2008: With a link like slinkyfoxvideo.com (dead link. now here) and a red lingerie-clad, girl-next-door hottie like the one in this video, viewership is almost guaranteed. Here at Adrants, we've seen a lot of videos used to promote all sorts of things. A lot of them. Most of them terrible. This, though, is one of the best. One could argue it's just another trashy sex-sells piece of crap but one would be wrong. The content of the video is directly related to what's pitched at the end of the video and it's wonderfully done.

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 9-08    
Topic: Best, Creative Commentary, Racy, Video



Sometimes We Have to Get Lost to Find Ourselves

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Sometimes we have to get lost to find ourselves. Sometimes we have to push away life's mundane, trivial, unimportant and, in the greater scheme of things, entirely pointless aspects of daily life in order to truly appreciate life and all the beautiful things in it. To treasure what really matters. To rediscover what first enthralled you with the people in your life. To understand there is much more to life than work.

These are the stunningly beautiful messages within Baz Luhrmann's new commercials (Kate, Lee Ming) for Australia's tourism campaign. The work does a spectacular job of making Australia a far more interesting place then the previous "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign ever could.

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by Steve Hall    Oct- 8-08    
Topic: Best, Campaigns, Celebrity, Commercials



Twitter for Christ, Facebook Narcissists, Vaseline for Men, McCains on the Grill

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- Recap of the McCain/Rachael Ray glee-fest.

- University of Georgia claims narcissists can be pegged by their Facebook photos.

- Save your soul -- and the rotting souls of others -- while microblogging. Way to multi-task!

- AIG yanks all corporate ad campaigns.

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MoMA Gives Expressionist Exhibit the Tech Treatment

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For its Kirchner and the Berlin Street exhibition, MoMA worked with Behavior Design to put together an online "companion piece" where users can explore the art from their computers.

The exhibit showcases "Street Scenes," a series by expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Visitors can sift through pages of his original sketchbooks in a smooth little image gallery. Art from "Street Scenes" can also be juxtaposed to the original drafts.

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by Angela Natividad    Sep- 9-08    
Topic: Best, Campaigns, Online



Don't Just Be a Man; Be a Pretty Smart Shopper.

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Dual body wash and moisturizer isn't really a new idea. (Companies like Dove beat that horse dead years ago.) Bringing bang to an old combo, Wieden + Kennedy enlist a centaur for Old Spice Double Impact. He's half man ... and half provider.

More importantly, he's actually got YouTube users talking about Old Spice. Will they buy the stuff? Hard to say. But hey, if a centaur doesn't turn this trick, Doogie Howser, M.D. definitely will.

by Angela Natividad    Sep- 7-08    
Topic: Best, Brands, Campaigns, Commercials, Online, Strange, Television



Zippo Banner Campaign Ingeniously Inventive

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It's not often online banners excite. Gone are the days a banner would evoke anything other than "Will that friggin' thing stop flashing?!" But Pittsburgh agency Brunner has created an ingeniously inventive banner campaign for Zippo which makes humorous use of the product's primary function.

In three version, a skyscraper banner is cut in two. The top half is a fake ad. The bottom is the actual ad for Zippo. The top reacts to the bottom and then the two come together to deliver more information about the lighter. You can see the three versions here, here and here.

by Steve Hall    Sep- 2-08    
Topic: Best, Online