Because we work on the internet, we like to entertain the fantasy that we're down with hackers or could have been hackers if we wanted to. This surmise is probably untrue as we haven't yet mastered the art of face-to-face l337-sp33k.
The spiffy rogues at Hanft Raboy and Partners put forth Discover Hackistan, a hacker community that scoffs at tired bourgeois trimmings like intellectual property and valorizes everyday net annoyances as seeds of revolution. Hackistan's one enemy is Fortify Software, the status quo superheroes characterized by fringey promos of this type from Hanft. We dig it.
Kitschy hacker country aside, Fortify shows it doesn't mind laughing at itself as sworn saviours of web uniformity. An "open letter" running in magazines includes an invitation for Hackistan citizens to "Join the world community and enjoy the benefits of globalization: soaring divorce rates, mindless entertainment and obesity." And if that's not compelling enough, consider the consequences of contributing to the free-for-all programming universe. Ooh, it gives us the shudders.
It's unsettling to watch people do unnatural things with their bodies, which we suspect is why The Exorcist became a horror classic.
This print campaign for Ashtanga Yoga Center uses a similar technique, turning the idea of supple flesh into something more ... elastic.
Leagas Delaney of Milan put this one together. We think it's an effective if bizarre way of demonstrating how yoga brings a willing body to an unwound, even disconnected state. Still, if we wanted our feet and hands to fall in all the wrong places, we'd play Twister. It may not bring us to om but nobody ever outgrows the odd fondle.
For album "Year Zero," Nine Inch Nails sets fans on a scavenger hunt with a series of webpages predicting the future. One example is Another Version of the Truth, a picture of a seemingly gentler America. When you click and drag your mouse, the pastoral picture reveals a desolate wasteland.
The first of the sites was discovered by fans who put together a set of highlighted words on a tour shirt. After that a spiral of other sites were found with roughly the same end-of-the-world, fascist/religious theme.
The effort was orchestrated by 42 Entertainment, the mad geniuses responsible for the Halo 2 campaign that sparked a dramatic nationwide search for a princess trapped in cyberspace.
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Damn! How's a guy expected to finish a marketing book when it's read to you by a woman sitting on a bed slowly removing her clothing? One would think the publisher authors of this marketing book, Punk Marketing, would at least want you to finish the book before another sort of finish unexpectedly occurs. [Ed. OK, that's just gross! Who the hell wrote that?] This is the second disrobing hottie video the publishers authors have released to promote the book. In the first, the model, Cleo, disrobes on a plush rug in front of a fire. In the second, she's on a bed. In both cases, she's reading excerpts from the book. In both cases, we watched the video instead of picking up the book which has been on the desk in front of us for three weeks. OK. We admit. We've read some of it and we like it.
In his long-winded mod-turtleneck way, Youtube philosopher Sergei explains why anti-smoking scare tactics like this fuel stigma but don't actually help serious smokers, who just feel alienated and become more defensive about their right to smoke.
Sergei makes some good points even if he's probably preaching to the choir. We also like that he smokes throughout, and puts points in subtitles. That's panache. In fact we're pretty sure that most people who like to puff while listening to themselves talk in a small cafe would elect for subtitles or at least bullets to illustrate their wisdom if they could. (We would anyway.)
Unfortunately, even savvy marketers are hard-pressed to work out how to foster a non-smoking culture in a way that encourages non-smokers to pursue a better quality of life but doesn't insult their intelligence.
It was only a matter of time before a game as fun as Crazy Taxi would reincarnate in ad promo form. That's what Nokia has done for its interactive film/game The Passenger, which is pretty engaging. The music ain't bad either.
You're a driver on the night streets of Paris when a sultry woman hops in and urgently asks to be transported to three addresses. At aid is the Nokia Multimedia Car Kit CK-20W, a nifty GPS-stocked device, but follow directions or your passenger will throw insults at you. Don't you love doing life-saving favours for people who get all bitchy?
The game was put together by the interesting mindfolk at Hyper Happen, Fuel Industries and Karbon Arc, and features footage of Paris shot just last November. Thanks Netanel for the tip. We don't want to sound too excited but this would make a pretty decent (if really, really short) standalone video game. Then again, we're not actually gamers, we're biased ad people, so we imagine actual joystick jockeys are rolling their eyes in disgust right now.
Alumni from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) started production company The Dandy Dwarves and were tapped by their alma mater to create an interactive viral marketing campaign.
The fruits of their labour? SCAD Shorts. The object: guess the title of the bizarre spot playing on the screen. The trick: titles must always have the SCAD acronym.
This is harder than it sounds but results in some weird videos.
Repeat visitors get a running chance of winning - what else? - an iPod.
If you like beat boxing, you'll like this new commercial from Nike where athletes' breathing takes on rhythmic form and becomes a creation unto itself. The ad was created by Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai and produced by HSI in Culver City, CA. Not much else to say other than watch.
Until the arrival of Danica we didn't think of racing as much of a hottie sport. But these new Allstate spots with Evernham Motorsports' Kasey Kahne might just change our minds.
Set to air during the Daytona 500, the ads continue a campaign from last year and feature yummy Kasey getting repeatedly eye-raped by women from Allstate's Girls Day Out campaign. Watch him get bullhorn-frisked, and here's a spot where he tries driving away before damage is done.
In case you're wondering, the spots are for Allstate's Accident Forgiveness and Your Choice Auto Insurance packages. Unfortunately for us the Kasey package isn't one of the plans you can add to your policy, but that's okay, because he'd probably cause more accidents than prevent them.
Who knew there were companies created specifically to assist you if you find yourself in a position of irreconcilable differences with your business partner and the shotgun clause gets invoked? Well, thanks to Dentsu Canada, we know know of at least one: Argosy's Shotgun Fund. Since our friend over at Dentsu did such an eloquent job describing the work to us, we're going to let him do for you here.
Dentsu's Glen Hunt tells us, "OK. So you're a creative partner in a business, say, an Ad Agency. You've got a partner, say, a suit. He thinks it might be a good idea to churn out crap for your biggest paying client and resign all the other businesses that landed you a Clio, 2 lions and a couple of pencils last year. What to do? Invoke the Shotgun Clause in your partnership agreement, buy that smarmy prick out and send him back to his Mom and Dad where he developed small man syndrome in the first place.
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