When the Carolina Panthers won the right last Sunday to take on the Chicago Bears, Bears fan Kevin Lynch, a partner at Hadrian's Wall agency in Chicago, knew just where to find some action. He emailed David Oakley, the co-CD of Charlotte's BooneOakley. The wager was simple: no points, winner take all. The loser will check their ego at the door and promote the winner's agency.
If Carolina wins, the Hadrian's Wall homepage will inform visitors that BooneOakley is a much better agency and direct people to the BooneOakley site for a week. If Chicago wins, the BooneOakley homepage will inform visitors that Hadrian's Wall is a much better agency and direct people to Hadrian's Wall homepage. The two agencies have even created dueling winners logos to go along with the bet.
Hmm. Perhaps the two agencies are merging and this is just a means to gin up some banter. Or, perhaps, it's it's just inline with an agency that celebrates its fifth anniversary by hosting a party at which two of the partners partake in a spoof wedding.
Coinciding with the launch of China CEO Tom Doctroff's book, Billions: Selling the the New Chinese Consumer, JWT China issued a press release with the headline, "Understanding and Embracing China's Different Worldview Is Main Theme of Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer, by JWT's Tom Doctoroff," which offers 12 facts about the "Confucian Consumer." While the release may seem like yet another harmless attempt by a marketing entity to neatly lump together the traits of billions of people and slap a cute title on it, some who watch the country's culture closer have taken issue with the oversimplification and incorrectness of the 12 facts.
The main complaint is the trotting out of Confucius to "frame the market for American business people" writes the China Herald weblog that doing so "creates the illusion that there is one driving force in the Chinese market you can use as a beacon in an often chaotic situation." In an article on Danwei written by Jeremy Goldkorn who works in the Chinese ad biz, he offers a a point by point analysis of the release and ends with "bullshitting is part of the game in the advertising industry." While we have no idea who's right and who's wrong on this whole Confucian Consumer thing nor are we equipped to make judgement, we do know Goldkorn's statement is as true as the Earth is round.
Our friends over at Japander bring us so much glee, delivering us our favorite American movie stars and celebrities in ads they'd never be caught dead doing in America. In this ad 24 star Kiefer Sutherland runs through a train full of plaid-skirted Japanese school girls 24-style shouting "yes, yes, no, let me through" until he finally gets his Calorie Mate.
Contextual advertising is so much fun, especially when it works so well such as in this placement of a credit card company's banner within a Sydney Morning Herald article about a woman dying from a shark attack. Credit card sharks need not apply. Somebody needs to tweak a few algorithms.
In a perfect alignment, Budweiser has signed on as exclusive promotional sponsor of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit issue and will also team with SI supermodel Molly Sims who will appear in the brewer's point of sale material. Budweiser will host pre-issue promotional parties in 50 cities on February 13. Budweiser will also place a six-page fold out in the issue featuring FOX Sports Best Damn Sports Show Period hottie Leann Tweeden.
If bad law firm advertising is your thing, you'll love this. Martin Willimas has created a really bad law firm website for law firm Warwick Seltz complete with the cheesy tagline, "If you've had bad pizza, we'd like to meetz ya." Yes, the law firm's speciality is pizza. Huh, you say? Hey, there's lawyers out there for every other conceivable thing. Why not pizza? OK, OK. The site's fake. It's a guised promotion for Donato's pizza. The site's got all the goodies including four really bad TV commercials with really, really bad jingles and the now required element in all online endeavours, a Subservient Chicken rip off that's actually funny.
Candy maker Jelly Belly has launched an advergame called Taste the Mystery visitors can play after entering an access code found on select packages of Jelly Belly containing a mystery jelly bean. ON the site, the visitor then guesses the flavor of the new bean, play games, snag wallpaper and send e-cards. Winners of the contest are eligible to win $100,000, a Mini Cooper and/or an iPod shuffle. That might make the game worth playing.
Placing the code on packaging does a nice job of driving sales even though, as with any sweeps, no purchase is necessary. But, similar to frustrating rebate procedures, entrants who wish to play but not purchase have to do a little extra work by sending in the proverbial self-addressed postage stamped envelope with a handwritten note requesting a code. Much easier to just by a bag. Anyway, we like the promo. Los Angeles-based Zugara created the original artwork, concepting and animation for the site.
Fed up with all the advertising industry's award shows, mindless ego-fests and that thing called Clio, the Empty Box Awards has launched and dubs itself "The Intramural Awards of Advertising." On January 23, Empty Box will post a topic and then entrants can submit their work based on that topic. Entries are due March3, 2006 and the winner will be "unboxed" March 17, 2006. Have fun.
Adrants reader Sarah spotted a Johnnie Walker building wrap on the Baiyoke Sky Tower in Bangkok, Thailand that began with the tease, "Drink, Don't Drive." Weeks later, the Johnnie Walker walking man appeared capped with a white banner that, very oddly, for a liquor brand, read "Don't drink alcohol, it's against the 5 rules." The banner refers to the five rules of Buddhism one of which bans intoxicating substances. Perhaps it's just covering all bases but it's an odd combination of mixed messages for sure. See the teaser image here.
We doubt spending $2.6 million will do anything to overcome the cheap packaging and less than mouth pleasing taste of Emerald Nuts but you can watch their commercials, created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, over at Yahoo beginning January 23. We'll take Planter's over Emerald any time.
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