We won't fight the notion TV needs all the help it can get when it comes to program development so we're holding out high hopes for The Storyteller Challenge, a TV pilot competition presented by MySpace, FOX and the Producers Guild of America. The competition, hosted on MySpaceTV (which currently makes no mention of the competition), will award two winning entrants $25,000 and a chance at an development deal with FOX. MySpace members will comment on the 5-7 minute entries, vote for their favorites, suggest plot lines and generally play television critic.
First it was Doritos commercials. Now it's full blown TV shows. What's next, movies? Oh wait, we had Project Greenlight and that didn't go over so well.
Here's a fun time waster for marketers sick of the daily pitches they receive from agencies. With old school-style gaming technique, you can annihilate those incessant pitches as the enter your office and disturb your day. There's nothing more to it. Well, except for that mini-skirted flight attendant who welcomes you to Moosylvania's world. And yes, it's all just another agency pitch.
Oh look. Yet another ad campaign has "borrowed" from a student spec campaign. In this case, it's a JWT Sydney-created campaign for Cannes 2007 Lion winner Science Diet dog food which, oops, looks a lot like this Advertising Education Foundation 2005 print winner (scroll down) Streamlight created by an Academy of Art University student.
Coincidence? Maybe but shining a light out a dog's ass isn't something your average creative conceptualizes every day. You decide.
Fashion advertising, more so than any other form, is in the eye of the beholder. Just ask D&G. While we don't fawn over fashion mags as much as, say, Anna Wintour fawns over next season's collections but we're quite sure Perry Ellis, whose Fall 2007 press release gushes, "the legendary American fashion brand known for pushing the envelope in its seasonal advertising campaigns, is taking yet another unexpected turn..." is doing no such thing with this new print campaign.
We could be wrong. And since we don't claim to get it right all the time like Bob Garfield does, that's always a possibility but we don't think so in this case. That comic book thing from the last campaign? We never got it. Way too hipsteresque for our jaded sense of the world.
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We're not really sure what's happening in this ad for Amnesty International by Grey Thailand, which solemnly (in Courier, no less) intones, "Not all domestic violence is visible."
In the top right-hand corner there's a wee little gremlin man with his hand raised to strike. He looks like an antagonistic character from a children's novel, maybe something like Freak the Mighty - mean, granted, but only two feet tall.
This fall Scripps Howard is going to start publishing a free magazine called Skirt! for "educated and empowered women." Men who appear in the publication have to wear a ... well, we'd hate to ruin the surprise.
On our merry way to infantilizing everything in sight while demonstrating our educated- and empowered-ness, we think it would be a great idea to push the first 100 issues of Skirt! with a riding crop.
That way, we have something to snap maliciously if the laddies forget to cross their legs while sitting.
Microsoft and EA have just joined forces to create a dynamic ad platform for sports games on the Xbox 360 console and PCs. This means that next time you strap up to play Madden, the sponsorship banners and other ads you see will change.
In a way, this is kind of an improvement on reality. Can you imagine playing your favorite sport -- in the middle of Times Square? It's a dream for the overstimulated, possibly LSD-addled mind that hoped to become Joe Montana but never got past JV.
Madden 08, NASCAR 08, NHL 08, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08, and Skate will feature the dynamic ads at outset. Non-Xbox and non-PC variations will go on wearing the static versions.
Ars Technica is bummed because this new stream of income doesn't mean a less expensive purchase for gamers. Yeah, sometimes it sucks to be on the receiving end.
Some time ago we got word that Sisley released this racy ad featuring allusions to coke, the unofficial talc of the modeling world.
Later Benetton Group, the parent company, left us a comment stating this work is not formally associated with the Sisley brand. The statement included a push for Sisley's latest campaign featuring Stephanie Seymour, "worldwide recognized as an icon of fashion and beauty."
An image from said campaign is at left. It's so much less racy (and infinitely more creative) than the coke-whore glamazon variation. < /sarcasm >
Inspired by these curious events, MyItThings wrote a post on fakedvertising that pretty much states Sisley (or someone who loves the company enough to throw together some pretty well-made creative) pulled a clever one with this effort.
Way to go.
So much for the attempted resurrection of Orville Redenbacher. Seems the creepy fellow didn't accomplish what Crispin Porter + Bogusky and ConAgra foods had hoped and the account has been moved to Venebles, Bell & Partners. The campaign, which launched in January and met with a collective "what the fuck?" from observers and has been laid to rest alongside the real Orville Redenbacker...who never should have suffered the indignation of this excuse of a campaign from the former poster child agency.
OK. So what do you get when you ask a few hot agency interns to come up with a new business and then create a campaign to promote it? Well, SalADvertising, of course. After all, assvertising was already taken. Today, according Night Agency interns, is National Salad Day as well as the birth of their company, SalADvertise.
Noting 35.9 percent of American eat salad three to six times a week, the interns figured, hey, that's a captive audience so they've created branded plastic take out salad containers as a saleable medium. Being interns the team isn't yet jaded by too many fresh idea-crushing years in the industry so they skipped past all the marketing crap we create just so people will pay us lots of money for something they could have done themselves and went right to the Holy Grail of advertising: sex sells.
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