Here's a creepy twist on the American Psycho premise.
You're in the Chinese laundry. Some hotshot white executive walks in and starts heckling the pitiable Asian owner in front of his family. He makes the nasty requisite Pokemon and Hello Kitty jokes, does the grating "oriental" accent. Things are clearly spiraling out of control.
Suddenly, a black dude in the background takes a call on his Jawbone Bluetooth headset. And in a noise-canceling orchestration Bose would be proud of, the world beyond his convo is efficiently muted.
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To celebrate the first birthday of Louisiana's Smoke-Free Air Act (Act 815), New Orleans-based Trumpet created this ad, which appeared in newspapers throughout the state.
It features an overturned ashtray with a birthday candle on top. Part of it reads, "For the past year, the Louisiana Smoke-Free Act has increased the flavor and health of Louisiana dishes by removing one toxic ingredient: Secondhand smoke."
We like the unique message (which makes us hungry, actually) and brave use of white space. Happy first birthday, Act 815.
AOL just now released its results for the top-ranked ads in its 6th Annual AOL Super Sunday Ad Poll, sponsored by Verizon. Here's the top five:
1. Budweiser Clydesdale/dalmatian ad
2. Bridgestone squirrel spot
3. Coca-Cola's Balloons
4. Life Water's Thriller
5. E-Trade's talking baby spot
"Advertisers bring their 'A' games to the Super Bowl commercials, and Budweiser scored an impressive victory this year as the best of the best," gushed GM Derrick Heggans of AOL Sports. Nothing new there.
Gotta say we're glad the Coke Balloons spot made it into somebody's top five. But what'd we tell you? There's no beating Rocky. Maybe next time, Charlie Brown.
Here's a contemporary homage to the classic Volkswagen ads created by Doyle Dane Bernbach, NY. This version was put together by DDB, Paris. Adland has more. Some, like this one, position the 60-year-old van as politically transcendent as well as timeless.
Hey. Didn't the Dharma Initiative in Lost use VW vans?
Here's some Super Bowl buzz research from Collective Intellect:
- Pepsi generated the most "share of voice" (22 percent) in blog posts during and after the Super Bowl. This includes the Sobe spot that gave us WTF Syndrome.
- eTrade's ads produced the "most positive sentiment" across .com advertisers. (If by "positive sentiment" they are referring to the talking fetuses that haunted us in our sleep.)
- The Ice Breakers spot generated most negative sentiment. Well ... no shit.
Download the report, complete with handy-dandy graphs, and bars that go both up and down.
Looky, Looky! It's Obama Girl, aka Amber Lee Tettinger...and her curves... introducing the results of this year's MediaCurves Super Bowl commercial study. And we thought all she did was Barely Political Work., Hmm.
This particular study, which surveyed 2,400 Super Bowl viewers (eat that, USA Today!), declared the FedEx Pigeon ad the best commercial of the year. Following FedEx were Budweiser's Clydesdales commercial, Coke's balloon commercial, Diet Pepsi's Head Bob, Bridgestone's Squirrel, E-Trade's baby, Bud Light's Caveman and others.
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OMFG! Finally, something not Super Bowl-related. When we head over to our fellow industry ad rag, Advertising Age (OK, it's far from a rag), we are usually in search of some specific article or reference that's been made. For some reason, early this morning, we headed directly to AgAge.com and were presented with one of their full page interstitial ads. We usually quickly click "Skip" (which, of course has some kind of built in delay forcing you to few the ad for about five seconds anyway) but at the sight of the deliciously captivating Christini Ricca lounging in the back of a limo reading Conde Nast's W, we became transfixed and couldn't turn away.
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Oh how the morning after brings clarity to the prior evening's dalliances. After having obsessively consumed over 40 ads, analyzing them and then writing about them all within a three to four hour period, we sat down this morning with a cup of coffee and did what ad people to the morning after: we watched the game again. Or, to clarify, we fast forwarded through the game and watched the commercials
We laughed. We smiled. We grinned. We even enjoyed that Will Ferrell commercial. And, we bathed in the beauty of Coke's beautiful balloon ballet. In the heat of the battle, people can be harsh and in some cases, we were. But from the perspective of the average viewer not hunched over a computer or in front of a conference room screen, most of the ads weren't so bad.
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That bastion of scientific accuracy otherwise known as the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter has crowned Budweiser's Clydesdale Dalmatian commercial the highest scoring ad.
We don't disagree but are saddened Coke's It's Mine beautiful balloon ballet didn't take top spot. It did, however, place 7th which is pretty good.
Rounding out the top 10 were FedEx's Pigeons, Bridgestone's Critters, Doritos Rat (an ad from last year, no less), Bud Light's Fire Breather, Bud Light's Wine and Cheese, Diet Pepsi Max's head-bobbing Nod, Planter's uni-brow woman (WTF?), Tide to Go and Sobe Life Water's Naomi Campbell/Dancing Lizards.
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If you want a seriously retarded re-cap of this year's Super Bowl commercials, be sure to check out Bob Garfield's video in which he thinks one of the Bridgestone commercials was homophobic, an extremely tame Victoria's Secret commercial somehow compels guys to go home and masturbate, the cartoonish heart in that Careerbuilder commercial as well as the "blood curdling scream" in Audi's Godfather spot will "scare the wits" out of children, Diet Pepsi Max is somehow marketed as a drug, McDonald's somehow shouldn't make people aware it's behind the Ronald McDonald House and that it's impossible for two people of opposing political parties to put aside their arguing for a day and relate to each other like human beings.
Seriously, Bob. Life really isn't as bad as you paint it. Didn't you see Coke's beautiful balloon ballet? OK, so this year's Super Bowl wasn't a stellar one ad-wise but it was not the debacle you paint it.
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