London's The Viral Factory just hit us upside our delicate craniums with "Extreme Sheep LED Art." You may not be able to wrap your brain around that right away, but it's exactly what it sounds like.
The video, a promotion for Samsung's LED line, is equal parts hilarious, a brainfuck and painful to watch -- painful because it's long and about sheep, a brainfuck because the sheep are being (EXTREME!) shepherded in such a way that they reproduce high art (sort of), and funny because THEY PLAY PONG. USING THE SHEEP.
Grand in its unyielding over-the-toppiness -- brought extreme fishing to mind for a sec -- and reviews on YouTube have been favorable. As always you've got the more eloquent members of the human race arguing over whether or not this was "enhanced" -- or demonstrating superiority with their absolute certainty: "fake as hell."
(*shakes head sadly*)
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Visit ihavethebug.com to take a quiz and find out whether you've got the "travel bug." The exercise -- short, playful and mildly entertaining -- serves two purposes: to flatter you and drive you to the Travel Channel. (If so inclined, note requisite Facebook tie-in at bottom left. What, don't you want all your friends to know you've got "excellent gumption, chutzpah"?)
Internet stuff put together by Razorfish. The Travel Bug TV spot, orchestrated by Moroch, is done in a faux-serious Big Pharma tone. You've got sufferers, playfully agonized; you've got gratuitous shots of people running on beaches. The Travel Channel's the cure, but like all drugs, you're warned it may only aggravate the symptoms.
Ad's expectedly corny, even a little dated in its humour; but the site quiz ties the gimmick back to Travel Channel shows well enough. At the very least, it sparked discussion: last night me and a friend were all, "What exactly is a sexy beach?" Verdict's still out.
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Clever Trueblood promotion straight outta Auckland, New Zealand. I like the idea of having stakes close at hand ... but won't these armaments undermine the benign vampires' ongoing battle for suffrage?
Mixed messages, man.
The other day we came across this banner ad for IMVU. The story should be easy enough to figure out: two hot avatars meet, and hey, one thing leads to another. "Live the lifestyle you've always dreamed of," the piece concludes, followed by IMVU's standard CTA: "Meet new people."
We were pretty incredulous about this "lifestyle you've always dreamed of" crap, but then we thought, hey, being sexy and promiscuous in a virtual world is probably infinitely safer than doing it in the Ritz bathroom. Anyway, since then we've seen a couple of other IMVU ads that better illustrate what IMVU means when it says dreamed of.
Fall in love like the first time, engage in girl-on-girl recreation -- or, hell, play Twilight without all the chaste overtones. That shit's creepy though.
It probably bears mentioning, however, that when it comes time for all the meat-rubbing, you still won't actually be your avatar. And you'll still be all alone.
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Shots Mag draws our attention to Wieden + Kennedy's "The Light" for Nike. It's one of those soul-of-the-run spots: all about the breath, the pace, the solitude of the sport and the community it simultaneously sparks.
You get the sense that runners inhabit a part of space/time that the rest of Suburbia's completely unaware of.
More intense and less playful than 72andSunny's "Men vs. Women." Classic Nike though.
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Timberland's "Delirium" compares buying nature-friendly shoes to a scenario in which a dire-straits castaway is rescued by nature herself. It's stirring material, particularly if you found a certain film, involving Tom Hanks and a volleyball, emotionally resonant.
Maybe a little heavy for a shoe label, but hey: if we can take a sentimental education from Coke, no harm in getting emo-schooled by Timbo.
By Leagas Delaney.
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In the SXSW 2009 session "How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk," panelists cautioned brands to police trademark violation while still protecting PR by practicing flexibility and communication when it comes to new media law.
In the age of user-generated content, sharing, remixing, mashing-up, and even simply referring to copyrighted content has landed both brands and users in a world of hurt.
What panelists called a "folk understanding" of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and traditional media law have given rise to large-corporate paranoia in the gray areas of new media content publication. Misunderstandings of Internet culture as well as trademark infringement have lead to heavy-handed policing of content and trademark use, often leading to online PR debacles.
"You become known as the brand that sues," said panelist Oren Bitan of HIQI Media.
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- An account supervisor at Lowe in Zurich has asked us to yank a recent post featuring a vampire whose fangs are made of OB tampons. It's unapproved client work. (That means it's not running anywhere and, he says, it never will.) I guess this means God does exist.
- Quite possibly the most amazing brownies ever.
- Wisconsin rebrands. We're still not going.
- Coke Zero's The Morning After (always a promising title).
- George Parker says sorry for using one of his favourite pet names on Susan Bratton, but manages to get some pokes in about an interview she did with Julie Roehm. You remember her, right? No? Probably best.
- Obama's face for Turkish bank.
See the beach girl at left? Her environment -- all the way down to her clothes -- are tricks of the light. This is her, pre-projection.
Shots of underpants-clad people in bare rooms appear in these displays for Puma's ongoing Lift campaign ("Light injected footwear"). Somebody turns an out-of-sight overhead on -- and voila, the more colourful elements of life is projected onto them. Cool idea by Droga5; other campaign credits here.
See street and surf guys. Also see the commercial, where a courting couple projects its desires onto the atmosphere. The song's appropriate in the context of these pieces.
VCCP put together this no-frills but amiable spot for Jordans Country Crisp, a UK-based cereal label that differentiates itself by spotlighting its own mom-and-popness.
We like how the story of the cereal plays out on the box, and how the wee farmer on the tractor calls out as he scrolls by. So granola. Tagline: "You can taste we care."
Jordans hasn't released a major ad campaign in four years; this also marks its first animated piece. Voiceover by Bill Oddie, whom VCCP said was chosen because of his "association with nature and conservation." Don't know about all that, but he's definitely got a good bedtime story manner. We feel warmy.
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