"Red Alert 3 Remix," a promotional video for EA's Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, is the fruit of a partnership between DraftFCB and remix artist CB Shaw. The latter interspersed offbeat Hollywood icons with references to 'net memes and gaming footage -- all to the tune of Hell March, the track used in the opening sequence to the first Red Alert. Good way to draw legacy gamers back into the hype, though many will probably feel alienated by the invasion of Planet Hollywood.
But the line-up is pop culture genius. Jenny McCarthy, Gemma Atkinson, George Takei, Jonathan Pryce, Andrew Divoff, Peter Stormare, Tim Curry, JK Simmons, Kelly Hu, Autumn Reeser, and Ivana Milicevic have all been enlisted as characters in the game.
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In the realm of contextual fuckery, it's not always the advertisers that screw up. Sometimes it's the "legit" content providers themselves.
Case in point: on Monday morning, Culture Grrl woke up to find her copy of The New York Times wrapped in some kind of ad jacket for NBC-TV's new season.
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European mobile carrier Orange has this pay-as-you-go program that lets users define their own reward system. To promote it, Fallon/London tapped Reuben Sutherland of Joyrider, who came up with "Grabber."
In the spot above, transparent orange balloons, shaped like random animals, float enchantedly up toward the skylight of a factory building. (This setting was labeled "timeless," which I guess is true, given that we never quite run out of deserted warehouses.)
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My sister, who's way into video games, sent me to YouTube.com/ExperienceWii, where users can watch footage from Wario Land: Shake It!.
The :45 video had major nostalgic appeal. I remember playing Wario games on Super NES and even on Virtual Boy -- where, in addition to wreaking havoc on a titillating infrared world, Wario also wreaked havoc on my vision.
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Riffing off The Vagina Monologues, Philips launched the Bodygroom Manalogues, a web campaign where a chiseled, slightly scruffy guy performs inconsequential rants -- most related to body hair -- under poor light. Submit your own "manalogue" to see if it's worthy of web staging.
To curb any lingering speculation about what the campaign is for, a Philips razor hovers casually in the lower left-hand corner. Mousing over it makes the razor stand to attention -- decidedly phallic -- and freezes the video.
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- T-Mobile debuts first Google Android phone, thereby changing face of mobile forever, etc., etc.
- Wieden and Starbucks break up.
- Wrigley sells advergaming goldmine Candystand to Funtank. No word on why the service, which CEO James Baker of Funtank called "great viral marketing," was sold. Maybe it was just time to cash in.
- Biggie Smalls hits the big screen. "Too bad we're not in middle school anymore," says a twenty-something colleague. "I'm imagining the tears ... and the hugging."
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Toronto-based furniture shop Simone Interiors now sells art created by the company owner, Lin Gibson. To promote this happy news, Gibson created a bunch of LP album-sized posters with multicolored bars and stuck them in local store windows -- with no accompanying explanation.
Roger Cullman over at BlogTO has more pictures. He also wonders whether passers-by noticed the installations. Commenters say they did, but nobody knew for sure what the promotion was all about.
"We thought it was one of those new gangs declaring their territory. Obviously, it turns out it was only those hipsters doing their hipster things," ruminated a reader called SCREWFACE.
So Blogworld. If you've ever wanted to hang out with 3,000 bloggers and talk about, well, blogging then Blogworld is the place to be. In its second year, Blogworld brings together everyone from Robert Scoble to, well, people you've never heard of in Las Vegas each year to pontificate about how blogs and all that blogs have spawned effect, well (again), everything.
In his keynote address Friday, Wine Library's Gary Vaynerchuk took a"just do it" approach to explaining what it takes to launch a successful business through the use of blogs and social media. Basically, his mantra was "become the expert" and "own the space." Identify every known blogger in your intended space, make contact with them, comment on their blog, comment on those who comment on your own blog, answer every single email, join Twitter and make contact with everyone related to what your business does.
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Here's an extended version of the American Express Travel ad that aired during the Emmy Pre-Show. In it, Martin Scorsese gives Tina Fey the hard sell on Boca Raton. It's the kind of thing we might characterize as funny, even if we didn't really watch it, just because it involves an awkward timeshare situation and Scorsese prattling -- almost, it seems, without end.
"There's a possibility of nine days -- not consecutive -- near the end of August, beginning of September." I like how he asks her to make the check out to "Cash."
By Ogilvy for American Express.
Take note, CP+B: In the realm of advertising, Scorsese's like the Seinfeld for a live-in-HD, less corny generation. His AmEx work aside, see what he did for Freixenet last year. (Seinfeld occasionally still does work for AmEx too, but it's all got a datedness to it.)
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