Back in our heady days of diapers, drool and a band known as Jefferson Airplane, Windows Vista was but an inactive brain cell in a small boy named Bill Gates. Today, Windows Vista is all the rage and Jefferson Airplane is now known (has been for a long time) as Jefferson Starship. We have to wonder if back in the good old days of Jefferson Airplane, anyone in the band could have conceived of being an integral component of one of the biggest marketing campaigns of all time. With all those drugs, we highly doubt it but today, what's not to like about a classic (the time, not the style) rock band headlining a concert tour to promote software. A lot but that's beside the point.
The agency with our favorite name, Wexley School for Girls, developed a free lunch concert series featuring Jefferson Airplane, a cosmonaut street team, wild postings, a teaser video and a website filled with galactic goodies all to promote Windows Vista and its partnership with T-Mobile. It's kind of fun. Check it out.
You can't buy publicity like the kind that comes with an appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue or on the publication's Swimsuit 2007 site. We never thought of the iPod and a piece of clothing but we rather like how model Marisa Miller wears it in this photo. Can you imagine a Zune here instead of an iPod? We thought not.
In a new commercial for the newly designed Cherry Coke, Los Angeles-based 72andSunny invents a new kind of downpour that isn't cats or dogs or frogs or anything else we've seen fall from the sky but cherries. Lots and lots of cherries. OK, most of them are digital cherries but still. We think it's kind of humorous an agency called 72andSunny made a commercial that's all about cloudy skies and rain
In much the same way they've set out to revolutionize TV, HBO turned a portion of their New York lobby into an uber gift shop of cinematic proportions. With the help of Gensler and Imaginary Forces the aim is not merely for the consumer to buy shit but to immerse the consumer in a magical mystical sitcom universe. Check out the storefront, and a sliver of the Sopranos, Sex and the City and Rome sections.
That stuff's all nice but we'd really like to see a special space for Oz. Come on, HBO. We can have Italian mobsters and neurotic 40-somethings any day. Where's our prison universe?
Any campaign with the tagline "it's always big" generally finds us paying a bit more attention to it than others and this new Colle+McVoy-created Minnesota State Lottery television campaign has us very interested. But, not for the sick reasons dancing around in your head right now. No. We like this campaign because it's a game. And it's game, called What's the Difference, that starts on the tube and ends online. In the ads, the viewer is asked to find the six differences between two images in the ad that represent a $20 million jackpot winner and a $200 million winner. Winners of the game are entered into a drawing to win cash and prizes.
With everyone in the industry latching onto the latest and greatest ad babble term of the day, engagement, it's nice to see something real come out of board room blather. We're giving props to Colle+McVoy on this one. See the ads here, here and here.
We reported Auntie Anne's V-day viral blast once already but we just noticed She's So Twisted for the first time and thought, how awesome would it be to hang out with someone who was bent out of shape all the time?
Not very. But this chick seems good-natured enough and we like how her little friend drags her around on a little rollie-board. Having a pretzel friend must be way funner than having a puppy or a ferret. We'd try being pretzels for a day but our drunker companions might eat us.
In our humble quest to find a Valentine's Day campaign that didn't leave us feeling sick or pressured, we came across Don Hertzfeldt's 1995 classic Ah l'Amour.
The video illustrates one small stick figure's attempt to find romance. Thankfully, he has a lot of lives to spare. In the end, there's only one realistic way to win a little stick woman's heart - and no, it's not sex. Weird, right? Because, like, sex gets us every time.
Wistfully playing off the very, very, very...very old, but never tired, joke about sunglasses allowing one's eyes to secretly gaze towards distractingly enticing imagery undetected is a new Brazilian campaign for Polaroid Eyewear. With the proper Polaroid glasses, the guy in this campaign can enjoy the best of both worlds. The real one where he has to act as though his girlfriend is the only woman in the world for him or the fake world in which every piece of jiggling curvaceousness is his to freely explore and conquer in his fantasies. Some of us thank Polaroid for this bestowing this blessing. Others, not so much. See all three ads here. The campaign is the work of Santa Clara.
There's something inherently funny trying to get somebody to laugh who can't on pain of death, or at least hurt pride.
This is the inspiration for Royal Guard Cheese, a game where you try to induce a guard to laugh with well-placed props that include a feather, a rubber ducky and a teddy bear. Getting him to laugh like this could win you a free trip to London.
STA, are you paying attention? Just kidding. You know we love you.
Symantec's RockDotRock has added a Valentine's Day Serenade feature that allows you to send a customized message to your loved one (as long as they are o the list of 200 names) sung by the heavy metal rockers who grace the site. It's a nice continuation of the decidedly very different software campaign.
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