With help from Dalla-based AdverTickets, GMC is offering free valet parking to shoppers in eight cities as part of a promotion for the car maker's new Acadia SUVation wagon crossover vehicle. shoppers in LA. Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and Tampa will be given tickets good for free valet parking. Also part of the promotion are Boom-Ads, wraps that cover the gates drivers who choose not to valet park must pass through to get into parking structures.
We think it's all well and good to help a struggling shopper out but hello? It's winter up here in the Northern half! We could certainly use the luxury of valet parking far more than all those warm staters who should enjoy walking from their car to the mall whereas those of us up here have to endure frostbite weather and the pummeling of winter winds. Something's wrong here.
Ever wonder what it's like playing asst. media planner to a set of sadistic self-righteous bigwigs? Find out from people who know. WTF-Chuck brings us Three Horses, a mini-feature on getting saddled at the bottom of the media planning ladder. He calls it bitter but we say there's always a little truth - maybe too much truth - in satire.
At some point in our careers we all get to be human shields. And how about demographic quantification? Few things are funner than making caricatures of whole groups of people while hoping to strike a chord with them.
Well, we don't actually get to do that as much as we'd like. That's what TRU is for.
In a Talent Zoo podcast interview, Cramer-Krasselt CEO Peter Krivkovich said, among other things including how illogical it was for CareerBuilder to dump the agency because its ads didn't place in the top ten of the USA Today Super Bowl ad poll, now that he's free of CareerBuilder he'd love to take on Monster.com. By all accounts, Cramer-Krasselt has catapulted CareerBuilder to stunning success even besting primary competitor Monster.com in some areas.
Oddly, CareerBuilder has been silent regarding its strange move and has offered no explanation for its sudden dumping of Cramer-Krasselt. Perhaps it's too embarrassed to face the wrath of detractors who've maligned the company for it's irrational decision. Perhaps we'll find out later there's some intriguing nepotism going on between CareerBuilder and the yet to be selected agency. Perhaps we'll never hear anything until next year's Super Bowl when the company, aided by some as yet unnamed agency, trots out another set of commercials. Perhaps no one will care and this will die like the controversy surrounding a certain Wal-Mart marketing executive whose name we no cannot remember.
Sometimes the beauty of simplicity is all that's needed to send a powerful message. This Cummings & Partners-created ambient campaign for Multiple Sclerosis of Australia carries the simple message, "Without your donation, research will stop." That message was affixed to a glass box in which an actual person, dressed like a research scientist would sit, slumped over until a person placed a donation into a slot beneath him. He would then come to life and pretend to so experiments until he felt the money had "run out." He would then slump over again until another donation was made. The effort brought in about $100 per hour and the organization plans to continue the effort.
Historically shunned but acknowledged more and more every year by car markers is the inevitable fact car accidents happen. Following VW's most recent entry with its dramatic crash ads comes this work (one, two) by Team One and visual effects company A52 for Lexus in which an interesting approach is taken to illustrate the ability of Lexus vehicles to help you avoid accidents. Each of the two spots takes a reverse look at an accident and, through a set change, takes us from the accident to a world in which the accident never occurs.
Recently, the Danish Road Safety Council took a similar but more dramatic approach with a couple ads that reverse the filming of an actual accident. The Lexus campaign imagines a world without accidents/injury because cars are designed to be safer. The Road Safety Council imagines the same thing but by urging people to drive more safely. Each uses trauma to illustrate trauma doesn't have to occur in the first place.
Leaving all political correctness to cause groups with nothing to do but bitch about every possible human activity and opinion, this new campaign from Cleveland agency Brokaw for Horton Crossbow, refreshingly, minces no words selling its article of death. With witty slaps in the face like "Hunters really aren't so different from other environmentalists. We just like to keep souvenirs" and "Sometimes the best way to clear your head is to bring one back to mount on the wall," the campaign isn't likely to be well-loved by PETA, the Humane Society or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We do, however, think Charlton Heston would get a kick out of it.
See the whole campaign here.
According to this video, America is hated the world over for its leadership, its moral authority, its declining economy and its trashy culture. Apparently, even Mother Nature hates America. But, America still reigns supreme in one area and that one area is the subject of a new documentary film hitting screens at the end of March. The film? Watch the video to find out. Telling you now would spoil the fun.
To promote its second annual Bugzhibitz show, an exotic bug event that runs March 9th-18th, the Toronto Zoo puts Jeb, a Hissing Cockroach from Madagascar, in the spotlight to do the talking.
Bugs Rock highlights Jeb's adventures from the Wild Wild ... wild, to ascendance as a star (complete with a music video) at the zoo.
With all these brand personas floating around we'd really like to see an icon face-off. Nothing against the hissing cockroach, but we wonder how long he could hang with the Geico Gecko.
A new campaign for Australia Post takes a look at every day of the week, each of those day's traits and how Australia Post works for Australians every day. In fact, its tagline is "Part of Every Day." Of course, Monday is the worst but Australia Post says it's there to make the day easier. Who new the post office could be so helpful? View all seven spots here in one video.
New Belgium, the source of our beloved Fat Tire Ale, kicks off a campaign toting "the sustainable side of whimsical [read: alcohol-soaked] living."
Denver's Cultivator Advertising and Design create Follow Your Folly, guiding jovial beer lovers to an interactive Wonderland promoting sustainability with bare-assed but enviro-friendly efforts like Save Our Rivers. Tagged "Follow your folly. Ours is beer," a featured beer appears in each promotion.
It merits noting that even before Google got all extra-extra with their bike-riding culture and alternative energy hype, New Belgium was already laying the groundwork. They were also the first brewery to switch to wind-power in 1999, and employees ride bikes or walk to work. With careful recycling, reuse and composting methods, only 2% of their waste becomes landfill.
Follow Your Folly looks to us like great marketing in harmony with the socially responsible values of a good company. Even if some people don't care about environmentally responsible corporate conduct, we sorta do. After all, beer is nature's nectar.
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