How's your brand holding up? Badly? Moderately? Google-caliber? Psh, right. No matter how well you think you are, you'll need to come in for a check-up.
With the Brand-o-Meter, SF-based agency Morter 360 exploits a technique psychiatrists and Munchausen's-afflicted mothers have used for time immemorial. Whether you're a powerhouse or flophouse, no moment is riper for some Mortar expertise. And if you happen to be confused about why you need to see the good doctor, read this soothing explanation.
Clever work. But did we have to read a whole media kit just to get to the lead form? It was like trying to reach Oz. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
What's that you say? Another sex-laced image on Adrants? England-based health care provider NHS wants men to know that smoking damages the valve that close and traps blood in the penis so that an erection is possible. Shawn Waite points us to the organizations recent campaign and website that uses the image of a burning cigarette as an increasingly flaccid penis. Be sure to check out the organization's Soft Magazine.
When discussing the art of passing gas, humor is usually right around the corner. In this new spot from the American Legacy Foundation's long-running Don't Pass Gas campiagn, however, humor isn't in play. The passed gas that's being discussed here is hydrogen cyanide which is said to be found in second hand gas...uh...smoke. Perhaps Flatulina would have commentary on this.
We don't know whether to love or hate this new Fuel London-created campaign for Volvo's C30 but that's the whole point. You'll see what we mean after you view the first spot. Well? Love it? Hate it? Do tell. The second spot is just plain weird. Each spot points to a Euro RSCG 4D Amsterdam-created Freewill website filled with all sorts of interactive games, widgets and more commercials
Not that you've ever had the premonition this guy did before buying condoms but this particular premonition, in the form of a 90 second ad for Manix condoms, clearly illustrates the "dangers" successful usage of condoms can cause. In Bulworth, Warren Beatty said, "If we all fucked each other, we'd eventually end up the same color." If Warren were in this Manix ad, he might say, "If we all fucked each other with condoms, we might end the world as we know it."
While the explanatory video sucks and is five minutes longer than its 6:05 length presents, we like this Kansas City shovel installation St. Louis-based Rogers Townsend did for its pro-bono client Outreach International. Under cover of darkness, a team planted hundreds of steel and wooden shovels in and around one of the city's parks to call attention to the organization's work it's done around the world. It was, seemingly, a fitting analogy for Outreach International and by several accounts, garnered a good deal of notice and media coverage. We're sure the local Home Depot and Loews were quite happy to sell out all their shovel stock for the cause.
The Art Directors Club, in heir promotional piece for the organization's 86th Annual Call for Entries, has acknowledged the state of our world and the tumultuous and precarious position in which today's ad industry finds itself. Created by TBWA\Chiat\Day New York (why do they have to use that forward slash instead of the other one everyone else uses making the typing od thier name a pain in the ass?) the poster portrays hurricanes, tsunamis, energy shortages, bird flu, pedophilia, rogue nations with nukes, political and religious tensions, big box retailers, and numerous other worrisome plagues that afflict the world and out industry.
In the creation of the poster, the agency got all voodoo-like and researched the history of Armageddon, medieval times and other apocalyptic events for inspiration. It shows. We like. In a most blunt and concise fashion, it truly sums up the insanity of our current commercial culture.
If the general public ever thought those of us in the advertising business were just a bunch of wanna-be-cool hipsters who drink too much Starbucks, play too much foosball and have strange tastes in music, these two new commercials created by Mother NY and directed by The Perlorian Brothers would confirm that line of thinking. In this spot for the Virgin Mobile Slice, a phone packaged to look like a can of sliced ham, nothing is normal. Nothing at all. And, perhaps, that's a very good thing.
Mediabistro has a three part series on how copywriters can build a great portfolio. Apart from witticisms like this in part III, "The sad truth is that having a great book means that sooner or later you will need to collaborate with another human being. This will probably involve talking, possibly being in the same room together, often listening to ideas and disturbing personal issues not entirely your own and maybe even liking some of them," we had a hard time getting past part II which had that strangely sexy photo of Jennifer Solow in her "Famous Author" tank top, bikini bottoms and leather jacket. Yes, yes, we know. We are easily distracted but at least we took the time to find this advice for you. Read it here, here and here.
The Government of Ontario cares about manners and thinks guys should be nice to girls. That's the gist of the messaging in this commercial which points to a site called Equality Rules. In the commercial, almost directly opposite from a scene in last night's Friday Night Lights in which one of the characters working the register at the local fast food restaurant tries to pick up a girl by telling her what she really wants when she places her order, a mean spirited guy, for no apparent reason, berates a girl who's just trying to order a burger.
The Equality Rules site is filled with cheesy cartoon advice vignettes that seem almost purposefully to mirror high-minded finger-wagging you'd get from your grandmother after she caught you getting drunk with your friend on his Dad's boat. SInce all other angle seem to be taken on convincing people to be nice, maybe this one will actually work. The commercial was created by Toronto's Bensimon Byrne and produced by UNTITLED (yes, that's the name of the company).
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