In its continuing attempts to be savvy, Yahoo! Search Marketing jumps on the holiday e-card merry-go-round and sends all affiliates a Simulated Niceness of Winter (SNOW) card. The one they shot out struck us as a mere mockery of the quiet pain and suffering they imposed as they sat around re-tooling to "innovate" a la AdWords.
We'd like to trash them more along this vein but the SNOW card creation function is actually pretty nifty. The gadgets, slightly psychotic-looking characters and voice recording function recall a time when Yahoo! was cool and truly ahead of its days, a time when we enjoyed playing with them. So here's to hoping they do better this '07.
OK, then. Anytime we receive an email from Playboy, we're more inclined to open it than an email from, say, paypalebayscam.com. In response to our call for entries relating to Sullivan Higdon & Sink's We Love Holiday Sweaters holiday card, Playboy Enterprises Public Relations Manager Traci Coulter sent us a picture of her and three others decked out in cheesy Christmas sweaters found at Salvation Army shops for a recent Santa Crawl the foursome embarked upon. Cute. But, Traci, which one is you in the picture? We need these important facts for completeness, you know.
Sort of like the trailer promotion for Wedding Crashers, this Levi's site let's you upload images of yourself that then appear on the heads of the bodies that appear in the "Straight Walk" commercials. It's :30 of fame for those who feel they really, really need it this time of year. The technology behind the fun is Personiva.
While we had a tough time getting past the first page of this site on which the very beautiful Susan Jones stares out at us, we finally made it to a story written by Robert Cherry in which he lists and comments on the top ten advertising-related movies. On the list, of course, is, perhaps, the truest movie of them all: Dudley Moore's Crazy People. Also on the list are Lost in America, What Women Want, How to get Ahead in Advertising and several we've never heard of before. So head over to Netflix and give yourself something to do over the holidays.
Smirnoff Ice's Save the Mistletoe is an amusingly long-way-around attempt to say Smirnoff brings people together (just like mistletoe - so stop ravaging innocent bushes).
While we remain unmoved by the plight of the sprig, the execution wins us over. By some curious witch magic the campaign features celebrity supporters that we thought were long dead or had found joy in covert day jobs. Natalie from The Facts of Life, Lisa Turtle from Saved by the Bell, Tiffany who crooned "I Think We're Alone Now" and even the Soup Nazi band together to protect the kissing plant from further appropriation by brute force.
That's not all. Kevin at PR Blog divulges having seen a swamp-like creature that was actually supposed to be mistletoe, getting heckled by children at a nearby ice rink for love of the campaign. We wonder which sponsoring celebrity burn-out he happened to be. We put our money on The Incredible Hulk.
Oh it wouldn't be an agency Christmas party without pole dancing, would it? Of course not which is why several Arnold staffers, during the agency's Boston in-office Christmas party, headed into creative director Pete Favat's office, where, apparently, a pole is in place to hold up the ceiling and did a little pole grinding. The Boston Herald's Inside Track reports there's a video on the agencies Intranet of employee Lawson Clarke doing dance moves while dressed in a red Santa bikini. Those of you at Arnold reading this....please oh please provide us more dirt. You know you want us to scoop Inside Edition, don't you?
UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. Here's the video of Clarke.
UPDATE II: Oops. It's gone now. Damn. Should have saved it.
Once upon a time we noted ad people would rather shoot movies than make boring ads. To illustrate this desperation we get tons of contrived holiday videos. But considering adland's love of video production in general, you'd think more artists would be thinking, "By gad. I'll get Ogilvy to position my bikini-clad models!"
Well, U2 did. Nix the bikini model part. For "Window in the Sky" they tapped Modernista, the only agency we know that self-promotes to an audience that perhaps prefers to remain unawares about agencies lurking behind brands. The resulting video is gorgeosity and includes multiple musical influences, icons and audiences.
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- Verizon's Giant's Stadium text message contest suffers from bad "can you hear me now?" reception.
- Looks like the pre-holiday layoffs are rolling in. Time Inc. just laid off 27 from its consumer marketing unit reports MediaWeek.
- If you just couldn't get enough of the fake Sony PSP blog, The Consumerist saved the entire site and reuploaded it to humiliate Sony even further.
- coBRANDit's Owen Mack attended the recent Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference in Washington DC last week and created several video interviews.
- IQ Interactive singing heads sing Christmas carols.
- Who knew? USA Today says the wise-ass Windex bird commercial was the most-liked ad in 2006.
- AdMashup, the site that collects submitted ad mashups was featured in the 2006 Advertising Age Book of Tens.
Adrants reader Burning Max fills us in on the scope of the HSBC tat ad we looked at yesterday. It's part of a global campaign called Your Point of View, where opinions fly forth on everything from wrapping paper to gorillas to Blackberrys (14 percent per this entry say they're actually evil).
Burning Max notes, "the campaign is obviously meant to drive people to abandon prejudices, look behind their beliefs and don't be afraid of differences - the best way to approach global business... and life in general, I guess..."
We dig it more and more. It's a total Benetton throwback, before they got into all that trouble with the Death Row campaign and dumbed down with Barbie liaisons. Here's to hoping banks and Barbies never meet.
Check out more provocative print and send accompanying ecards.
If there's anything that wakes one up more than a grande, half-caf, no-whip, double latte with room, it's a thong staring you in the face as you make your way to the office. Yea, we feel you, baby but we'd rather not show up to work with that horny highschooler look emblazoned on our mug. Especially during that account service meeting where we have to at least pretend we know what we're talking about.
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