VBS.TV is broadcasting a 12-part series called "Garbage Island," which follows the adventures of angry kids that scoop up, examine and lament the drifting artificial refuse we've forcefed Mother Earth.
It's an interesting series. But dude, what's going on with the visual litter all over VBS.TV? It seems incongruous to make us feel glum about depositing commercial waste everywhere while blatantly selling us commercial waste. Those Stussy ads chafe my eyeballs.
Just as the farting squirrel saved the forest from fire, a trio of penguins, with help from Vigorsol AIR, stop global warming by farting a jet stream of cool air. Yes, the fart joke is back and just as funny as it was the first time. Bathroom humor. It's sort of like sex. No matter how many times you do it, you never tire of it. OK, so maybe that's only true for some of us. The fart jokes that is. We know no one tires of sex.
Sort of like the spiraling, out of control political correctness movement that has eradicated all manner of fun from the world, this work for Tostitos by Mekanism and Element79 goes all out to make sure fun is a thing of the past. Seminars help workers "manage" the urge to have fun. The NOLAF organization is all about ending laughter and this work does it, thankfully, with dry, quirky humor. Of special not is the segment on "virus videos" which "put the FU back in fun."
ad:tech very much needed the so-called Internet Superstars, four "internet famous" types who were the center of the closing keynote at this year's San Francisco conference. The name, a bit cheesy for a panel (buy, hey, it's the name of the Revision3 show), was apt for the ad:tech crowd, a very different crowd than the SXSW crowd to whom, internet stardom is the norm.
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Golf is kind of boring to watch. Go ahead, disagree with me in the comments section if you like, but everything about watching the sport on TV is sedated: the players, the crowds and even the announcers.
Watching Phil Mickelson in the new Crowne Plaza campaign by Fallon makes the sleep-inducing nature of golf telecasts all the more disappointing.
He is really funny.
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Today, my classmate Zach noticed this Zyrtec ad on telephone poles all over Boylston and Tremont street in Boston.
The flyer reads:
"Missing 2 Hours. Last Seen: While waiting for Claritin to start working. If found please call: 1-800-4-Zyrtec"
Not that this is any sort of scientifically-vetted research but considering Zach took the time to take it off a dirty Boston telephone pole and pass it around and show his friends, it definitely seems to have made an impact... and it achieved that effect without shutting the city down like other Boston-based guerrilla efforts. It was cool to see how simple copy scribbled with Sharpie on plain white paper taped to telephone poles around the city had the ability to cut through the clutter of its competitors' glossy ads.
We do it with cars. Why not with people? After all, most people want to know what they'll be riding before they ride it. The woman in this commercial for Auto Trader Canada isn't taking any risks before commencing her date.
Two other spots which follow similar scenarios are here and here.
Seth Godin recently wrote a warm laudy post about how Twitter is great for building trust, brand equity and ultimately sales. Practically two seconds later, marketing and social media blogger Ryan Kuder wrote Seth an open letter declaring shenanigans.
It's not that Seth is wrong. Twitter is a great relationship development tool. I maintain daily contact with more people on Twitter than I've met in real life over the past year. We pass on streams of thought, as well as links we find interesting or valuable.
Occasionally, that interesting or valuable link brings users to our website. But that isn't only or always the case ... and this is where Ryan raises his complaint.
"I've got a beef with the way you use Twitter," he writes, "Because you don't use it."
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Any video that ends with "We'll cram our YouTube right into your Facebook," has to at least get shared a little bit. Agency Luckie & Company create a video and an accompanying site, Demand Justice, to celebrate the hiring of a new head of interactive and to poke fun at others (hey, that's what agencies do) who just don't get online marketing.
Created to resemble any one of the millions of cheesy lawyer ads you see on TV during fringe, late night and overnight, the ad features Justice "The Optimizer" Mitchell who confidently promises to "improve whatever crap you're doing online by...some sort of metric." Now that's the sort of honesty we love in an ad agency!
It's true. All guys are like this. We want simplicity in our lives. We want everything at our fingertips. We want to be coddled in luxury. We want it all. All at once. We want...All in One. Actually, truth be told, we're just lazy. So if we can cut the lawn while simultaneously barbecuing and watching the game, that's what we'll do. And we love that Scott's appreciates that.
MDC Partner agency zig created the spot, it's first work for the brand since winning the account last year. The spot is running in Canada.
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