For those of us who live our lives online with a collection of Twitter, Facebook, Pownce, Flickr, Second Life and Linked In accounts, this new Unplug Your Friends effort from Meetup says we need to overcome out addition to the screen and rejoin the real world. A commercial in which a closeted geek discovers there's a world beyond his collection of screens and online friends supports the effort.
It's trippy and surreal but it makes a powerful point. There's a world out there that isn't digital and it can be a very friendly place. The creative comes from freelance CD team of Julie Lamb and Phil Gable. Curious Pictures in New York produced the work which was directed by former agency creative-turned animation director Rohitash Rao.
- Want to amuse yourself for a few minutes with a stupid wrestling game? Head over to Anger Angle and beat the crap out of TNA wrestler Kurt Angle.
- Platform-A just launched an ad optimization system for the iPhone which "detects and delivers optimized ads on iPhones browsing the Web."
- George Parker lambastes the "first" Dell ad from Enfatico, writing, "A standard boiler-plate shot of a hard nosed bitch standing in cubicle hell with her Dell laptop clasped to her ample breast demanding protection for her 'data!'"
- Hints of blowjobs don't go over well with the MPAA which didn't take kindly to the poster for the Kevin Smith film Zack and Miri Make A Porno.
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What's an Olympics win without a few marketing deals following the win? Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Nastia Liukin won't know because she's already gearing up for a laundry list of spokesperson gigs. She'll front Cover Girl ads, launch a line of jeans with Vanilla Star, appear on the Wheaties box and appear on Gossip Girl. Oh and she already has a deal with tween website Beaconstreetgorls.com.
Liukin has a positive outlook, saying, "Winning the Olympics can change your life, and nothing can prepare you for that. You can go with the flow and enjoy the ride." A native of Plano Texas, Liukin was born in Moscow and moved to America with her parents, who competed in the Olympics for the former Soviet Union, when she was two and a half.
More marketing deals are likely to follow and she'll be hanging with Maria Sharapova during fashion week in New York at Peter Som's show.
Writing on AdPulp and in his TalentZoo column, Dan Goldeier makes, correctly, the argument most campaigns are no longer given the time they need to build momentum and to enter the psyche of the consumer long enough to mean anything. He asks the question, "are ad campaigns given enough time to work these days?"
The answer is a resounding no and that, shortsightedly, been the case for a very long time. No one wants to, or is afraid to, invest the long periods of time it takes for a campaign to truly build. Everyone in marketing is too fickle and they are more concerned with advancing their own careers than advancing the success of the brands on which they work.
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Inspired by all the election-time media-whoring, Make the Logo Bigger designed buttons that depict what voters McCain and Obama are going after.
Variants include Carnies for McCain, Luthiers for Obama; Fluffers for McCain, Cobblers for Obama; Women for McCain, Women for Obama. (Sure, Obama scored with women when Hillary endorsed him, but the GOP pulled out the big guns when top Republican women rallied in defense of Sarah Palin earlier today.)
For those of you that watched Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the RNC tonight, the button at left is a tribute to one of the many soundbite-worthy statements she made: "Do you know what they say the difference is between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."
...Yeah. I'm holding out for a "Drill baby drill!" pin though, because you know that shit was bananas.
- Blogger Meggie Poo unsubscribes to a random retail e-newsletter ... and its CAPTCHA calls her a whore. O_o
- Some members of the maverick Mad Men twitterati are affiliated with We Are Sterling Cooper, which "[catalogues] the conversation around AMC's Mad Men and its fanbase across the social web." Thanks @AmandaMooney.
- Speaking of fake Twitter characters, meet @S.A.R.A.H., an artificially intelligent house from the Sci Fi Channel's Eureka. Created by Fallon.
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Jamba Juice makes its foray into the grocery aisle with a celebratory ad by Publicis/NY and production firm Stardust. In "Fruit Pixels," a bouquet of berries spring out of a Jamba smoothie bottle and shape-shift into a swinging schoolgirl, a swimmer, a volleyball player and the Jamba Juice logo before slipping back into the bottle, now neatly capped.
Tagline: "Live fruitfully." Hrrrm. The Ting Tings, which sing Fruit Machine in the background, could've given you guys somethin' better than that.
Off-topic, I love how personified energy can be used to promote both hip surgery and fruity beverages.
Sike friends into thinking you have a Porsche. Upload a shot of your driveway on the Porsche -- I Can subsite, choose from one of four platinum-coloured models, then PhotoShop your heart out with a limited set of image adjustment tools.
The result is an almost-perfect, semi-nifty shot of a Porsche in your driveway. (Unless, like me, you Googled up a dream driveway too.) Save as wallpaper or share with friends. Just don't invite them over.
Impressed? Yeah? ...No? Well, the effort earned Cramer Krasselt/Chicago some LA Times love.
This year at the Olympics, performance-enhancing athletic gear were all the rage. Four years from now, will it be highly-advanced hips and knees?
"Smith & Nephew introduces the next generation of joint replacements: highly-advanced hips and knees engineered to meet the needs of your high-performance life."
The ad, designed to make active human beings look like fluid ribbons of energy, was produced by Psyop for Ogilvy/NY. I like how it breathes life into an industry normally associated with near-immobile geriatrics ("I've fallen and I can't get up!"). But It also brought Touch of Gray to mind. Sexy grays, bionic hip surgery: looks like advertising's in midlife-crisis mode.
To promote "Music for Life," whose theme this year was the dearth of drinkable water in some countries, the Red Cross and Studio Brussels let loose a thirsty black kid, who invaded TV studios and stole sips out of TV personalities' glasses.
It's hilarious. He just races onstage, gulps water down, and races off again without a word. Nobody can keep a straight face, and one chick just looks totally lost.
A video montage of the effort was put together and disseminated under the catchy name "Black boy wants water." As the Guerrilla Communications blog points out, it kept people awake -- and better still, got its point across.
The effort purportedly raised 3.3 million euros for drinkable water. It also won two golds, a silver and a titanium award at Cannes this year.
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