A few months ago, a senior copywriter recommended I read Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan. I was incredulous, mostly because I've been swinging off Ogilvy's left you-know-what since Confessions of an Advertising Man.
(Getting into Ogilvy is like reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time. It will fuck with your mind.)
Just to be nice, I bought Sullivan's book, and I'm really sorry I did. Because now my walls are COVERED in strategic doodling. I am developing ideas I wouldn't have allocated brainpower to six months ago.
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Whether you're an air traffic controller or some random kid in Toledo, Burma could use your help tackling that slippery "human rights" concept.
Seriously. There's some screwed-up stuff happening there, including ethnic cleansing and the imprisonment of a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Will Ferrell took time out of his busy Funny or Die schedule just to tell you so.
In the next 30 days, other celebs will lend their earnest faces and awkward jokes to Burma: It Can't Wait, orchestrated by Fanista and Digital Influence Group. Up to bat tomorrow: Jennifer Aniston and Woody Harrelson. Sure it's an odd pairing (Natural Born Killers meets Friends?), but crisis has a way of making unlikely bedfellows.
Loving how the site cuts right to the chase with that big red DONATE button.
Here's a neat way to draw attention without stripping down and eating body parts. In January, Improv Everywhere got 200 ordinary-looking people to invade New York's Grand Central station and freeze on cue for five minutes.
It was pretty well-orchestrated. One guy went catatonic while picking up some papers he dropped. A couple froze mid-stride. A girl's just-peeled banana never made its mark.
Surrounding bystanders totally COULD NOT DEAL. It was like witnessing the rapture. When everyone started moving again, witnesses applauded.
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- There's something about spoken word poetry that makes us clench our glutes. You know, like someone about to suffer something unavoidably bad. This spoken word PSA by "MIKE-E" for the American Cancer Society wasn't terrible, but we winced all through it anyway.
- Google Maps, meet GTA IV.
- So Twitter went down for just exactly too long, and in that time frame Jolie O'Dell discovered Chatterous (now in alpha!). It will get you laid.
- New Google killer on the loose. You know what's fun? Googling "Google killer".
- Starbuck's profits fell 28 percent compared to this time last year. Bummer. CEO Schultz says the crappy numbers "reflect the sharp weakening US consumer environment."
- Acura's TSX hopes to endear itself to Millennials by pointing out how we don't sleep. EVER. Printwork by RPA.
All that can be said about this video -- which Modernista created to say goodbye to Interactive Art Director Tim Blount as he heads to Boulder (for CPB? TDA?) -- is, um, there's definitely some hotties working at Modernista!
As AdFreak Tim Nudd correctly surmises, this fake medical condition approach from DDB LA which promotes Activision's Enemy Territory: Quake War will resonate perfectly with young boys who, if they aren't thinking about gaming, are thinking about sex. So, an "ailment" such as "projectile dysfuntion" is sure to get a laugh. There's a video and there's a site. Now go have a giggle because yes, even at your age, you still think this stuff is funny.
It's like Guitar Hero on your computer! Created by Cake and sponsored by caffeine-fueled Pro Plus, the game promotes Virgin's V Festival in August. Just like Guitar Hero, you use the arrow keys on the keyboard to keep match the moving arrows on the screen. Players who can keep up earn the chance to win free tickets to the festival.
-The boys at Diggnation Live had their way with the GoDaddy Girl last night. Or, rather, she had her way with them.
- PIXSTA, a UK-based company, launched an image-based online ad network which lets people click on various things in an image returning search results based on the object clicked.
- Draft/FCB Italy is moving and they've created a video to celebrate. George Parker doesn't like it but hey, it's better than looking at the faces of all that Draft/FCB ugliness, right? Kidding.
- During my dinner with the American Shelf Life crew in Boston last week, we discussed Twitter and the brands that are getting on board. Hear the good, the bad and the ugly.
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At the end of last year, Dell and WPP hooked up to create Project Davinci, an agency created solely to staff the Dell account in Austin and around the world. Recently, WPP took out an ad in the Austin Statesman looking for, well rocket scientists because, apparently, advertising people aren't smart enough to handle the seemingly daunting task of creating computer ads. That or they just wanted to write an oh-so-witty headline they could enter in some award show.
Poor Casey Jones. It seems his dream agency is taking a bit longer to get on its feet. Adrants reader illustrates the point with the photo caption, "...I was in the shower and it hit me, all I needed to do to save my ass was to go out and hire rocket scientists."
So KFC has been running this commercial that continues its "find the secret" approach to TV advertising. If you correctly identify the secret image in the spot or in the chain's POP display and are among the first 1,000 to do so, you will win a free sandwich.
So while there is, indeed, a secret image to be found in the ad, it was the nagging "who's that B movie star" reaction that captured more attention here at Adrants. The blond girl in the ad has been seen in several movies. Can you guess who she is? It's not Brittany Snow who's currently starring in Prom Night.
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