If lust doesn't do the job for you this Valentine's day, Swatch suggests voodoo. And if the voodoo fails, at least the apple of your eye will have a neat new watch and a weird-looking stuffed toy.
Swatch is running a neat little Valentine's Day campaign with love voodoo master Eddy G Lazaro. In this video he shows you how voodoo love Swatch watches are made. It's not nearly as action-packed as it sounds and there are no shrunken heads, but he does do that neat eyes-rolling-back trick. And each voodoo love Swatch comes with a bonafide voodoo doll.
What can beat that? We're at a total loss. This is just a notch better than smacking your partner on the back of the head and dragging her by the hair into your cave.
Responding to this British domestic violence campaign, Alt-Buzz decided to show us how the French do it.
Released by Young and Rubicam for La Federation Nationale Solidarite Femmes a few months ago, this ad demonstrates that when you beat your spouse, you teach violence to your children. The ending came as a surprise even to us. We've kicked cans, other peoples' glasses and the occasional pigeon but we've never kicked our moms.
Here's a collection of odd promos for Toronto pub The Hargrave which holds a trivia contest every night. The promos capture three scenarios in which a particular answer would be right but the wrong one is given because viewers are urged to "save you right answers" for The Hargrave's trivia night. They're just weird enough to make you go WTF was that?
- If you're in Vegas February 16 during he NBA All Star Weekend and want to hang with the likes of Lebron James, Baron Davis, Kenny Smith from TNT's Inside NBA and more and race against them in VW's 5 on 5 Drive Challenge, this event is for you.
- Because Valentine's day is all about sweets, Krispy Kreme is selling heart shaped donuts until Feb. 14. For each dozen purchased, people get 12 cards with a free donut coupon to give to friends. The chain is also sending box loads to celebrities during Fashion Week and to Clay Aiken for his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel next week.
- Agencies are dropping like flies from the $300 million Census pitch. McCann Erickson, Martin Agency, Mullen DDB, Leo Burnett, Ogilvy & Mather and Grey have decided not to pursue the account.
- Wall Street Journal Senior VP of Advertising Sales Judy Barry is leaving her position at the paper.
- Who knew? MySpace is making money for News Corp. And, it's the company's top money maker. eMarketer says MySpace is on track to make $525 million for Foc Interactive this year.
Women aren't much known for forgetting to wash their hands in public bathrooms (a lot of it is peer pressure, and hygiene) but the story may be different for men, who arguably may need it more than we do.
We're not generally huge hand-washing sticklers (it's good for the immune system, right?) but the psychological brainfuck resulting from this effort by Wash Your Hands may just change our dirty ways forever.
And if you couldn't already tell, we nabbed this one from Cool Hunter.
Lynette Web points us to a study that finds most teens are in a social network (duh) but also finds that the prevalence of social networks may devalue longtime humiliating (or triumphant) traditions like reunions for those way past teenhood.
"For instance, we recently talked about having our five-year class reunion, and I found that most of the people I asked said they really had no reason to get together in five years because they used sites like MySpace and Facebook to stay in touch with anyone they really wanted to keep up with, anyway," says Sam Ford of Convergence Culture.
That's disappointing. What have we been working so hard for if in the next five years we can't show our former nemeses how awesome we still look, then act really sweet and invite them (and their six screaming babies) to sit next to us? We have officially lost our will to go on. MySpace, you destroy everything you touch.
It's always interesting to see marketers take an old, familiar canvas and do something different with it. And that's probably the only reason why this paired ad for Dasani and Sports Illustrated is worth mentioning. It's certainly not as nerve-wracking as this, as exhausting as this or as eye catching as this. But it makes an effort, and it's sort of clever. Kind of. Maybe. Actually the length of the straw makes the whole thing feel a bit silly.
One has to wonder what idiot over at Bacon's came up with this lame idea. Recently, it sent an email out to its subscribers offering...wait for it...a DVD with all the Super bowl ads on it...for $500! Does Bacon's really think the PR industry, or anyone for that matter, hasn't heard of iFilm, Yahoo, AOL, YouTube, MySpace, Advertising Age, USA Today, the DVR or any of the thousands of other places Super Bowl commercial can be seen for...oh...$500 less than $500? Apparently not as it seems to think there are people in this world that will cough up $500 for what everyone else can get for free. Whacked. Truly whacked.
UPDATE: Competitrack is doing it too. Are we missing something here? Do people actually pay for this sort of thing?
We used to drink Killian's, that reddish beer that was cool for two minutes a decade or so ago. We haven't had it since. We wonder if anyone else has. That may change after February 20 when Killian's Irish Red announces its new television ad campaign which is said to focus on the brewer's unique brewing process. Not that that approach hasn't been done hundreds of times before but we'll reserve judgment until we actually see the campaign.
Valentine's Day approaches and with that, a frenzy to work out how best to show partners you love them. But love is abstract and ridden with dangerous cliches. How many longtime wives still appreciate the stock flowers and chocolates gesture? Lust, however, is flattering, easy to define and easier still to buy for.
Swedish company Lelo takes the traditionally cheesy sex toy and turns it into something to covet with sleek designs, subtle sizes and sweet little nicknames for its models like Lelo, Nea and Lily. It's a little like the iPod of vibrating gadgets. And for Valentine's day Lelo expands its narrow product line to include a limited-edition pleasure toy just for the season.
Lelo Valentine is a soft black ergonomically sound toy that comes in hot pink packaging and has "love" scrawled prettily right at the pleasure point. Created by Jesper Kouthoofd, it'll only set you back $129.
This year you can demonstrate your love - via lust - in no less than 16 speeds. And you can do it without looking like a prick clutching yet another prick in a giftwrapped box. With their fancy handiwork, high-brow price tags and low-key marketing, the Swedish are quite possibly the best thing to ever happen to the sex toy industry. And we're happy they've filled the niche, considering the Swiss have already taken cheese, chocolate and watches.
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