Remember Boost Mobile, the Nextel spin-off that spent the last three years molesting street culture under the tagline "Where You At?"
Hip-hop's run out of milkable teats so Boost's taken shelter in the ironic, determinedly awkward humor of suburbia. And Skittles commercials.
"Coroner" and "Bicycle" explain how Boost Mobile rawks, not because the value proposition is good (would you rather have "no hidden fees" or play iPhone Ocarina?), but because some things out there are worse. The problem is, you're left with little more than nausea over the still-lingering memories of unkempt armpit hair and breakfast burritos a la Poe. You will have absolutely no memory of Boost's merits.
Which I guess is how it should be.
180LA's responsible for the ads, which fall under a campaign called UNwrong'D. AdFreak's right. That apostrophe -- the whole concept, really -- is like cyanide.
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WTF? Please! Not another creative archive! Yes, sadly, we are going to subject you to another. But wait! Don't go just yet. This one is from us, your favorite ad site in the entire world, Adrants. Isn't that awesome? Now you can get everything from us; your ad news on Adrants, your social networking needs on AdGabber and, now, your obsessive need to peruse other people's creative with the Adrants Creative Archive.
And guess what? It's free! OK, well that's sort of a lie. Let us clarify. As new creative is added, it's free for a couple of weeks before it goes behind a subscription wall. So why would you want to pay for a creative archive when so much of it is out there for free? Seriously? Oh come on, you know why. Admit it. You're lazy! You don't actually want to troll through YouTube or Flickr to find what you want. That's like trying to find a creative director that doesn't wear black.
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Floyd Hayes, the guy who brought us twipple, drew our gaze to "punkvertising," a description that immediately made us wince because we mistook it for Punk Marketing -- a dire book promo that consisted primarily of a woman named Cleo, slowly disrobing.
So-called punkvertising is tame in comparison. Punk-rockers were enlisted to trawl the streets of New York to spread word about some kind of Diesel promotion.
Apparently Floyd asked one of them if he liked the idea of being a sell-out, and the kid said something to the effect of, "$25 bucks an hour? Shit, I'd wear a dress for that - I don't care really!"
Guffaw.
Red Bull's partnered with Oakley to build a secret half-pipe behind Colorado's Silverton Mountain -- all so snowboarder Shaun White can have somewhere to train. (Okay, okay, it's not just for Shaun White.)
The space is closed off to the public and can only be accessed by snowmobile or hellie. Word has it the thing cost $500,000 to build.
Just goes to show -- brand love pays dividends as long as you stay away from other kinds of pipes.
- There's been movies about boxing. There's been movies about wrestling. Now there's a movie about...wait for it...arm wrestling. Well at least they didn't name it Pulling Johnson.
- Urinal advertising is alive and well as illustrated by these ads
at last week's SMX Search Marketing Cnference in Santa Clara.
- Complete with PeeWee Herman's "Don't Do Crack," The Huffington Post has collected the Nine Weirdest PSAs Ever Made.
- There are five days left to enter the 2009 One Show Interactive and One Show Design. Although the One Show call for entries is now closed, the deadline for Interactive and Design is February 27, 2009.
- Ogilvy does its part for diversity.
- The AD Club is organizing their second All-Access Pass of the Year. The event will be at McCann Erickson on Tuesday March 10 from 6-8 pm, featuring a "roundtable" with Chief Technology Strategist, Faris Yakob.
- RevenueScience is changing its name to AudienceScience.
YouTube's given rise to more than its fare share of pro-bono talking heads, so it's not often we watch any one "thought leader" video in full. But "The Command Economy," an ad manifesto from Carlos Mandelbaum's Carnival of Ideas, gave us pause. (He's got these expressions that grab you! And we love that musical text-reader gimmick.)
Listen with audiovisual fixation as he explains how the '80s ruined everything (which we already knew), and how advertisers' bad-ass commanding attitude have something major in common with the Berlin Wall.
It's tasty bait, and we wanna find out where he's taking us.
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It's called "Ken Block Gymkhana Practice." (But what is Gymkhana?, you ask.)
We didn't really get the big deal, but that was before we realized our fingers had burrowed into the glass tabletop. Then Ken Block did donuts around a guy on a Segway, and it was like, "Ohhh."
(It's racer porn. Plenty sexier than that one time you watched two Ford Fiestas tango in London. Even if you're not a speed junkie, the handling depicted in Gymkhana is fit to give you tingles.)
Mad Media put the video together in collaboration with Ken Block, DC Shoes and Subaru. Stats listed below.
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We knew a guy who got drafted into the Ukrainian military. As the day of his departure drew closer, he turned into a person we hardly knew and who sort of freaked us out. Finally he confessed he was dodging the draft and leaving for London.
"But why?" we said.
"Ukrainian military makes people disappear," he hissed, looking all wild-eyed.
Having just seen this ad for the Ukrainian Army, we have serious doubts about that and resent that he lied to us. Ukraine's first line of defense turns ordinary folk into dangerously charismatic mofos, capable of seducing women of varying hairstyles away from men with BMWs. Said women will shower you with alabaster jugs of vodka and chase your tanks while making marriage contract innuendos. (Now you know why Tony Stewart picks the Russian chicks.)
You will also get a really vivid hat.
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To promote its pension plan, AMF uses tact and a tongue-in-cheek tang to explore the actual merits of the good old days.
We were hooked from the first scene, where a kid with a dated haircut is stuck in the car with his chainsmoking parents. But the scenarios just kept getting better. Think life before Lisa! Think dinner pre-pizza.
The voiceover wraps with a niggling question: "Were the good old days really that good ... or do things get better and better all the time?" (We're really glad Forsman & Bodenfors resisted the temptation to license the Beatles.)
On-screen text: "Funds for the future. AMF Pension."
NICE!
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