The bitchy thing about Candystand, which has long exhausted its welcome in the Adrants annals, is their advergames are actually really good.
Take this new one called Fire and Ice. With unique characters and quirky music, the game still manages to bring us back to the Super NES days, jumping over turtles and malicious red owls while trying to sate an endless lust for floating coins. We can't trash something we just blew half an hour playing.
Our only problem with it is it lacks that classic Mario speed-running feature. Do you hear us, advergame gods? We want a speed-running feature.
As we surmised earlier this month, Philips Bodygoom has taken its efforts the the next logical step. The marketer's agency, Tribal, has launched Robot Skin, an episodic series in which grooming robots, otherwise known as "the key that unlocks the version of yourself you always wanted to be," become the most desirable toy men can possess in the future. It's a a nice effort. After all, imagining a fembot stroking your various body parts is a lot more exciting than the mundane reality of an electric grooming device doing the same. And it's far better than that dude in the white bathrobe spewing double entendres about your nuts. But we do wonder if Svedka Vodka's fembot are gonna come knocking.
Change the body and the mind will follow. Or so the copy says.
- Dell's $760 million account is up for grabs and everyone wants it.
- Disney just gave the three Canadian dads who launched Club Penguin $350 million with another $350 million on the way in 2009.
- Catch Speedo King Donny Deutsch and uber political commentator Arianna Huffington at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas September 30 - October 2 when they speak at the Electronic Retailing Association convention.
- BL Ochman tells us how one brand, Kryptonite Lock, has improved its handling of social media outbursts dramatically since 2004 when it was awarded Business 2.0's Dumbest Business Moment of the Year Award.
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For some reason, finding Chicago's Delacosta restaurant on 466 East Illinois is a challenge. While in town for the ad:tech show, I walked by it two times before realizing it was right in front of me. Adrants Co-Editor Angela Natividad had trouble finding it as well. And it's right there on East Illinois exactly where it should be. Perhaps it was the ultra-humid heat messing with our minds. Perhaps, at least for me, it was the mini-skirted, high-heeled, belly-shirted, stunningly beautiful woman I'd passed by on that very same sidewalk earlier in the day still clouding my mind. Perhaps I'm just dumb. Likely, it's the latter.
 Anyway, I found the Wunderman/TDI-sponsored party at Delacosta. Angela found it. And so did buddy and UnSubCentral VP of Sales John Engler along with UnSub Central's Brian Ambrose and Rick. It was a small party with about 150 people but it was one of those parties where you could actually talk to people and the people you wanted to talk to where there. And, the food was very good. Far above the usual ad:tech-related party fare.
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Tuesday morning at ad:tech Chicago, big brands like YouTube and Yahoo debated the likelihood that the Holy Grail, sought after by everyone from Indiana Jones to Tom Hanks, is (and perhaps always has been) in the unlikely hands of advertisers.
With every new medium comes a wave of schizophrenic behavior in which old media titans express fear, reproach and occasionally cavil at a "threat" that has seen no equal in history.
The movie industry did this with the arrival of VHS, and we do it today with online video - not without merit. Around a narrow corner lives the thinly-veiled concern that we might be kissing our cash cow, network TV, good-bye (and good luck), in favor of a mutable and virtually immeasurable entity: the internet.
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Magnificently magnifying metaphors, this recent All-Bran commercial from Kellogg has no problem touting its ability to aid one in shitting a brick. Or two. Or an entire dump truck load. Yes, the spot is jam packed with endless bowel movement metaphors. Enjoy.
Entering the same room in which I sat somewhere around 1998 or 1999 when then head of Leo Burnett promised "not on my watch" will Leo Burnett ever go public, I thought, "my how times have changed." The room, however, is exactly the same; dark and lit like a carnival ride.
As ad:tech Chair Drew Ianni took the stage to introduce Wired Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Anderson who was the keynote speaker at ad:tech Chicago, he introduced something else, ad:tech's new working tagline "The Event for Modern Marketing" and gave an overview of ad:tech's expansion into other overseas markets as well as the growth of the online marketing space in general to its current level $20B.
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- If you care, Facebook's heretofore "non-existent" ad rates have been leaked.
- Pepsi's Alan Pottash, the man behind many successful campiagns such as Pepsi Generation, Pepsi Challenge and all those celbu-commercials, died July 27 in LA at the age of 79.
- Toto's Times Square bare asses have been covered - quite creatively - following complaints from Reverend Neil Rhodes of the Times Square Church.
- This is what happens when an ad agency with just ten people and three accounts has too much time on their hands.
With not so subtle environmental and political commentary, this new JWT London-created commercial for Smirnoff - sent to us by Adrants reader Scamp - just blows away any recent liquor ad - or any ad, for that matter - we've seen in a long time. With amazing special effects and bone-chilling Soviet-style music, the sea rebels against man's carelessness and penchant for war mongering by eradicating itself of human byproduct to illustrate Smirnoff's "extraordinary purification" and deliver its "Clearly Smirnoff" tagline.
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When politics and pop culture meet, it's always a little fun to watch the synergy. Adverlab points us to this spot for Louis Vuitton, which slid from the Lolita-esque Scarlett Johanssen series to a celebrity survey that includes Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's first (and last) president.
The New York Times observes that Gorbachev "appears the last comfortable [...] holding on to a door handle, as if the bag contained polonium 210."
Upon examining Gorbachev's expression, and then the bag, we've concluded there's definitely not a bowling ball in it. (Although it may well be perestroika.)
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