Under the premise that contemporary families have become little more than communal strangers, Panasonic tries bringing back family time with its "family" of HD products and this ad.
Because nothing bonds like Shrek in HD.
The ad debuted last week on ABC and USA Today and is part of Panasonic's Living in High Definition campaign. (Get it? "High definition"?)
If you think your family could use some lessons a la Full House from Panasonic, you could win a spot in the program by entering here. Lucky households will make formal pledges to spend more time with one another and other super-exciting stuff.
Thank Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners for this winner.
This is part of Greenpeace's ongoing attempt to get Kleenex to stop using ancient trees to make its products. It's pretty much the same deal as what happened here -- indeed, they're interrupting the exact same "Let it Out" campaign -- but this time everybody's in Wrigley Fields and there's lots of bear puns (Chicago is home of the Cubs).
There's an adaptation of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the end of the video, except the lyrics have been changed to champion the cause of bears and trees.
Clever the first time. The second time around? ...eh.
After our stokage, then disappointment, over the latest Bravia ad -- snippets of which look suspiciously like this Kozyndan panoramic (sent to Passion about two years ago) -- Sony gave us the following statement.
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One thing we can say about French AIDS PSAs: they're compelling and almost always raunchy, even if they don't always take on a playful persona.
Leo Burnett, Paris just put together Sidaction, which pairs the heat of the moment with a crucial truth about sex in an AIDS-slammed environment.
Beyond an orgy of writhing bodies, the spot's end leads to jarring -- but not pushy -- imagery. We hate to ruin the surprise, but you'll never look at the hourglass scene in Disney's Aladdin the same way again.
It's great work. Now if only we could stop thinking about Vaseline.
Here's some food for thought as you consider just how smartly your marketing budget is being spent. Recently, a media buyer refused to place a buy on a site because the site's content was deemed unsuitable. All well and good but then the same media buyer placed the same buy on a blind ad network (a buy that is made without knowing on which sites the ads will appear).
We bet you can guess what happened next. Yup. The ad appeared on the site that was deemed unsuitable because the blind ad network buys ads from the same, so-called unsuitable site. One, perhaps, can't fault the buyer since they had no idea the ad would appear on the site they thought should not be part of the buy but doesn't the entire blind buy thing seem idiotic? It's like, "Hey, let's throw some money at a stripper and see what sticks to her thong." Not the most efficient use of one's cash.
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This "Infinite OZ" subsite for the Sci-Fi Channel's Tin Man does little besides guide passive visitors deeper, deeper and still deeper into worlds sitting inside other worlds, kind of like those marbles at the end of Men in Black.
Entrance looks and feels like the rabbit hole Lewis Carroll's Alice fell into, except slower and scarier (vestiges of Pink Floyd, maybe?). Advertisers will also be happy to know that the first thing a person sees upon penetrating the refurbished Oz is a billboard.
Granted, it veers into a totally fucked-up, scary and apparently deserted world, but hey, this is very good news for those seeking a more interactive user experience.
And oh god. Did a disembodied female voice just say "There's no place like the O-Z"? You did not go there, Calle & Pelle Sjonell. (This is their last gig for Fallon, Minneapolis before they move on to BBH, NY.)
Tin Man premieres November on the Sci-Fi Channel. After traveling for 10 minutes into the void with no end in sight, part of us does want to see the show.
We haven't heard a peep from Saturn since the Aura's mad diss by Bob Garfield. But the company hopes to reinvent itself with the Astra (try not to confuse the names), targeted directly at MySpacers.
To celebrate its call to "Rethink," users are invited to take a test drive. Try to work out what's going on with the laggy PowerPoint-esque site while trying to ignore the corny copy: "Go. Stop. Look. Turn. Repeat. Is this really how we fall in love with a car?"
It may not be the formula for falling in love with a car, but it sounds suspiciously like the directions on a shampoo bottle, except with too many confusing demands.
The big research finding prior to developing the new TV Guide ad campaign? "That the consumer is not in love with TV - the consumer is in love with a particular show." And it took actual research to determine this? Hello? This is not a new finding. People aren't in love with the delivery vehicle. They're in love with what that vehicle brings them. Someone ought to tell the folks over at Disney who still seem to think the success of High School Musical 2 was due to love for the Disney Channel as opposed to the movie itself.
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Ahh, three spankin'-new iPhone ads. The synopsis: iPhone Saves My Ass in Front of My Boss, iPhone -- and Maybe My Wallet -- All I Need in Life (why is this guy parked on the sidewalk?), and iPhone is God's Gift to Mankind.
And who better to convey these messages than the breathy customers whose lives were saved? (It's possible they're all early adopters justifying that nasty $200 price cut announced two months after the iPhone's debut. Way to go, Steve!)
We've been to plenty of ad conferences and we've seen plenty of people sitting on the floor with their laptops checking their email or IMing a colleague but we don't recall seeing too many women wearing very short school girl-ish skirts sitting with their legs in a position that would allow all all to see...well, all. While some of us might like seeing that, we're thinking it's fairly unlikely to become anything more than a fantasy in the mind of an away-from-home conference goer.
However, the ecomXpo thinks it's the norm according to one of their recent brochures promoting this week's conference. The brochure has four people - two men and two women (because, after all, we are totally PC in this industry) - sitting on the floor using their laptops. Both women's skirts are short but one is quite short and of the pleated plaid variety, her legs, in all their glory, fully exposed. We have no problem at all with this style of dress. In fact we wish we saw it more often. Sadly, we just don't think it's something one would see too often at a trade show. Except, perhaps, during that fantasy-cum-reality hotel room tryst.
Of course, the fact the ecomXpo is a virtual trade show and not a physical one, short, plaid, pleated mini skirts on women with long legs and the fantasies they fuel make perfect sense.
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