To prep us for our own game day (February 3!), SOLdesignfx for Allstate sent us a parable about an undervalued kicker who wins the game. Oh, and you also get to see the Allstate guy with the soothing voice. We haven't seen him since Allstate got all badass.
Sadly, he isn't featured in the other two ads -- "Statue," where two wankers hold their breath for a bronzed Bobby Bowden, and "Diner."
It's the traditional insurance ad premise: the unexpected can happen. Swaddle your peace of mind in the loving arms of Allstate.
CEO Alan Siegel of Siegel & Gale put together a manifesto of what brand messages each of the Election 2008 candidates are conveying. Among other things, John McCain is read as the "straight-talking rebel."
Oh, we cannot emphasize how painfully we winced when we heard "The MAC is BACK!" pouring out of New Hampshire. Can't politicans just leave rap -- and any music, really -- alone? Bulworth was a movie, not a career blueprint.
Hillary Clinton, Siegel adds, undermines her "Leading Brand" role by attacking "Challenger Brand" Barack Obama.
How very Coke vs. Pepsi. Just one more reason to avoid frothy drinks and frothy speeches. Read full text below.
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"A Magical Amount," by Arnold and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, starts out like a typical Truth ad: cigarette traps, a bullhorn and a bamboozled-looking group of people. Then a unicorn showed up, and there was singing, and...
Wow, just ... wow. Seriously. Wow.
You really have to watch it. The premise is tobacco companies don't want to kill you, but don't want to prevent addiction either, so there's a "magical amount" of nicotine in cigarettes. But tune out the arsenic talk and the animated oxygen mask, and you'd swear it was a superb cereal ad.
We always new Jay Mohr was an actor. We never really knew he was a comedian (we gave up on SNL long ago and, more recently, never watched Last Comic Standing). Apparently, appreciates his comic abilities and hooked up with him for a video contest called TaxLaugh in which entrants vie for a $10,000 and a chance to open for Mohr prize by submitting three minute comedy vids.
Jay tells us, "Most people think doing your own taxes is hard and being funny is easy. We're out to prove them wrong. TaxLaugh will give comedians the chance to make a name for themselves by making people laugh about something no one likes - taxes."
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Match.com swears if in six months you don't live out a love story with someone from its site, you can have six more months of free service to make up for it.
Not all tell-worthy stories end happily though. Sometimes you get locked out or hosed -- which, now that we think about it, isn't nearly as bad a fate as this one.
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OK, here we go again. Tonight, you have a choice. You can tune in to President Bush's State of the Union address. Or you can blow it off and, instead, head over to PETA's 2008 State of the Union Undress during which a lovely lady envisions a PETA-powered nation while she slowly transforms herself into a "fur free" state of undress. It's NSFW but not until the end and there's a Safe for Work version too.
Battering its usual "boo-hoo, we are too racy for Fox" shtick, GoDaddy sent us a celebratory pressie reading something like, "FINALLY, they've approved one of our deliciously naughty spots for the Super Bowl!"
The ad features Danica Patrick. And while GoDaddy didn't send us a teaser for that, it did send us one for yet another rejected ad called "Exposure." It's supposed to be a spoof of "a certain pop culture celebrity phenomenon" and Danica thinks it's really funny (we suspect she's contractually required to). See the whole thing here on game day.
We're in year two of our association with the Business Development Institutes's Diversity in Advertising efforts and want to let you know about two upcoming events. On February 12, we will host the Second Annual Advertising and Marketing Industry Job Fair at the Academy of Art Institute in San Francisco. On February 27, we will host the Second Annual Advertising Industry Diversity Job Fair and Leadership Conference at New York University.
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Maybe because Nationwide cashed in like mad on its K-Fed pre-Super Bowl ad hype last year, everybody's releasing their spots before the drop.
We don't like the idea of opening our presents before Christmas day (which is what watching a Super Bowl ad a week in advance is like), but in some cases an early debut is a good thing.
That's the case with Pepsi's Bob's House, a Super Bowl spot by BBDO for its Enable campaign that composes a deaf world we're invited to watch from the sidelines. A silent ad is jarring, but it's weirder still to be passive observers of a community whose jokes we don't get.
Neat switcharoo on the minority experience. Can't wait to see what kind of response this generates on Super Bowl Sunday.
See the making-of, which, thankfully, isn't the usual self-congratulating "how I made my baby" swill.
Hmm. It looks like Jeep has taken a cue from tobacco companies and given the Joe Camel treatment to its advertising. In this KNSK Hamburg-created commercial for Jeep, kids and adults alike are treated to a fairy tale world in which ten vehicles make their way across the landscape. Nine suffer problems during the journey. Can you guess which one completes the trip? Yes, we thought you could.
OK, fine. It's not tobacco tactics trying to get five year olds to buy a Jeep. It's just some good 'ol fun bringing back childhood memories to car buying adults. We like.
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