It's called Skyburst and it's, don't blink now, a "fireworks arcade-style puzzle spectacular for everyone to enjoy!", and it's to promote those new LifeSavers Fruit Splosions candies. Yippee.
Okay, essentially it's a pyro game in a cheap tuxedo stitched by bright-eyed anime kids who write copy in exclamation points. Don't get us wrong. We like fire and we like anime, better still when they're together. We just wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Make the Logo Bigger points us to a new Benetton ad in which Madonna candidly poses with her three children, including the boy from Malawi whose dubious adoption she's actively campaigning to defend. But hey, we're willing to bet at least $1 that one has nothing to do with the other. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Like an aging rock star who won't roll over and die, Mcdonald's has brought back their McRib sandwich with the MicRib Farewell Tour II, a follow up to last year's original McRib Farewell Tour. On the site, visitors can build their own rock concert light show that can be recorded and sent to friends, download McRib themed t-shirt designs, download McRib "power rock ballads" and download McRib wall paper for their computer. While that all makes for a good time, we found ourselves spending way to much time just watching that intro rocker chick do her thing. Over and over. Yes, we are truly ill. We admit it.
Also back is the BPFAA (the Boneless Pig Farmers Association of America) website, bonelesspigs.org, a fictitious organization that promotes the good will of boneless pigs. This whole boneless animal thing. It just makes one wonder if all the PETA videos capturing the mythical boneless KFC chicken are for real.
It's a bit scary to think the office server in some back closet would take on the look of an octopus or a giant squid but that's the imagery Publicis West chose HP chose to introduce its Blade System C Class server. Apparently, lots of hands (tentacles?) are a very good thing when it comes to a server's capability to organize an office mess.
Oh those Japanese do love to be odd. In a Japanese shopping center models were hired to do the live window display thing (yeah, like the zoo!) to promote teen-targeting brands like Nokia and Apple.
Weird. Probably also really boring, unless there's internet access, which we doubt because then the models would spend less time dancing around and shit. Check out a male version here. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
This childhood obesity ad sent our minds flying in multiple directions, none of which brought us closer to Birds Eye. We're not even sure what they sell aside from that it involves food.
The Birds Eye logo made us startlingly hungry for a fun-sized bag of Fritos. We weren't sure why but with a little research we quickly found out. Excellent choice of logo. Then we started thinking, it would be neat if the parents charted both horizontal and vertical growth, because then there'd be sort of a quadrant thing going on.
Otherwise, and for what it's worth, good ad. Or not. Either way, sucks for Chris. He probably acted on the Frito impulse. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Here's a no-frills campaign that packs a mean punch. This series of ads for APAV gave us vertigo, then chills. The ad copy reads "As you can't feel what they feel, see what they see." Equally stark commercials are also circulating.
The campaign is for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which is November 25th. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Perhaps directing some of the attention away from Edelman who was behind the Wal-Mart fake blog (flog) thing, are two new blogs for McDonald's, but not labeled as such. The co-promote with Monopoly. The Consumerist points to 4railroads and McDmillionwinner (link goes to Google cache as someone inside McDonald's apparent said "oops" and pulled the blog) and explains how the two sites are inter-related. Even though they carry dead giveaway copy written not by bloggers but by copywriters, the two blogs do not mention any association with McDonald's or Monopoly.
It's not that the blogs were launched in a clandestine manner. In fact, an October 19th press release makes reference to the 4railroads blog. It's just that things should be marked as they are. There's nothing wrong with cute, teaser campaigns but to pass something off as something it's not because it's thought slapping a brand name on it will lessen it's effect is, well, just not right.
TAXI has done a nice job positioning Amp'd Mobile as the alternative mobile phone service of choice and these three new spots either reinforce that or simply reveal Amp'd mobile users are cracked. There's the caught singing in the bathroom spot, the dumb, overzealous Dad spot and the orchestra member gone rocker spot. They each either reinforce Amp'd as a provider of really great content or they just prove adults are just grown up kids in disguise.
In case the goofiness of the spots don't set Amp'd apart from others, the Pound the Pinata site, on which a Mexican trio plays Hip Hop, Metal, Reggae or Mariachi while you whack the pinata phone certainly will. Sure, it's all fun but do you know anyone that has an Amp's phone? And where does Amp'd actually have any service?
Isn't it so much fun now that we have all these really cool video sites like YouTube? Any idiot can put up anything they want and legions of social media lovers will glom all over it like rabid Saw III fans? Not, by any stretch, are the creators of this promotional video for UK men's magazine Monkey isiots but it sure looks like they had fun creating this whacked, monkey-like commercial.
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