I went to Toronto last weekend and attended a dinner party hosted by Shannon Stephaniuk of Glossy Inc. If you're a blogger, a production company or one of her agency clients, you probably know her well. She's the PR person who actually presents advertising in a format journalists like (and cover lavishly):
(subject line.)
PICTURES!
LINK TO (DOWNLOADABLE) CREATIVE!
LINK TO CREDITS!
To other PR people: Why is this formula so hard to grasp? Just today I got a fucking one-page essay from Peroni's PR folk, pitching me on its new "Calendario" campaign, and then NOTHING. What, I have to email back to see the creative? Oh wait, there's a tiny link to the site right at the bottom near the fine(-as-hell!) print. Once I give my birthdate and location, I can hunt "Calendario" down myself -- if Peroni was smart enough to post it there at all. (What ho, it wasn't.)
But I digress.
The dinner party took place Friday night at Nyoob and featured a handful of Toronto-based media and ad people. The guestlist is posted here and so are the photos, if you want to see what havoc ensued.
Quotable highlights from the party are below.
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European mobile carrier Orange has launched a phone charger powered by dance energy.
"The Orange Dance Charge is the result of months of research into alternate, sustainable energy sources to power mobile phones during summer music festivals," says the pressie with a straight face.
The unit was developed with help from GotWind, whose unfortunate name refers to renewable energy research, not the thing that happens when you pull Uncle's finger. The charger's system of weights and magnets provides an electrical current when a person flails about.
Orange Dance Charge was tested at the Glastonbury Festival last month. A promotional Dance Charging Man helped newbs charge phones in exchange for a dance.
Yeah, I've fallen for that one before. Just one dance, baby ... and I'll give you a charge, all right.
Lenovo is maximizing its Summer Olympics sponsorship with a social media rollout dubbed "Voices of the Olympic Games." Rohit Bhargava, SVP of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, described the strategy in a sentence that would give William Faulkner brain freeze:
Use Lenovo products to power athletes sharing their real experiences leading up to and during the Olympic Games directly with fans around the world.
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For last weekend's Glastonbury Festival, GotWind.org partnered with mobile firm Orange to launch the REcharge Pod, a mobile phone recharging station powered entirely by wind.
The companies pitched a windmill-mounted tent where people could charge phones without using ordinary power sources. The pod recharges 100 mobile phones per hour; any unused energy is stored in its Manbat battery bank.
This was the REcharge Pod's second year at the Festival. Thanks to in:fluencia for the tip.
- It Didn't Air is another awards show that aspires to tickle the creative babies that were too ugly or flawed to make it into waking life. Strictly for radio ads -- and only $75 to enter!!
- Anheuser-Busch is going to stop selling energy drinks. Which is probably wise, because tipsy + hyper = high likelihood of Death by Freak Accident. Typically on a train track.
- Mega-Bang turns bald, bearded, nearsighted men into repetitive sex gods. Also, check out his bathrobe insignia. It's a phallus. With an orbit.
- Mattress Firm is looking for the most sleepless person in America. The winner gets a new mattress and a free consultation from a shrink -- er, sleep expert. To enter, write an essay or submit a video, though I think the latter's preferred because that's what all the cool kids do.
"Dude ... I think the tennis player in that ad just totaled your car with his oversized ball."
"Sucks, man. Wanna play tennis?"
"Sure. But before we go, let's buy proper footwear at K-Swiss."
"High-five!"
Orchestrated by TriBeCa for the Roland Garros French Open in Paris. More photos here and here.
Fun facts: Maybe because it's French, TriBeCa calls it "ambush marketing," not "guerrilla marketing," and the goal was to create a "Wahoo Effect."
I'm not really sure what "Wahoo" is ("Yahoo" without the awkward "Yang" association?), but maybe it has something to do with how people open their mouths and make no noise when they see something like, say, a car smashed by a giant tennis ball.
Via the hip cats at in:fluencia.
For KahloRivera100, Ken Carbone of Carbone Smolan Agency created a playful print that riffs off the King and Queen of Hearts.
"I chose to emulate the structure of a playing card, as it best demonstrates the duality of this royal couple in the history of art," Carbone said.
Some backstory: Kahlo and Rivera, lovers, political agitators and artists, got married and made each other completely miserable until Kahlo's death (lots of cheating and general ego-clashing). They apparently loved each other too much to really separate.
Carbone's work piece is especially appropriate in light of a recent video sent to us by BC Dairy, which depicts the Queen of Hearts cheating with the Jack of Spades. (Frida is reputed to have cheated on Diego with Trotsky, who was murdered with an ice axe. Okay, maybe this connection is kind of a stretch.)
KahloRivera100, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of Kahlo's birth and the 50th anniversary of Rivera's death, is sponsored by Alliance Graphique Internationale. It will feature over 100 contributions, including this one, and will appear at the Club de Banqueros de Mexico AC in Mexico City this July.
Ric Kallaher, the photographer who took all those awesome shots at One Show in May, ditched the Cannes International Ad Festival for the Coney Island freak show, otherwise known as the Second Annual Wrath of Cannes.
And he's not sorry.
"Who needs Cannes?! Beter yet: who WANTS Cannes?!" he concluded, having obviously returned a changed man.
"THIS is everything an advertising awards show should be: last minute, no hassle entries open to anyone & everyone, free beer, rockin' surfer-guitar music (blasted out by the ever-cool Tarantinos), raucous fun on the beach, and on-site, in full-view judging for clients that could never exist for ad campaigns that could never air.
"But, hey, with modern mobile platforms, why not?!"
Below: 8 Freakish Things We Learned About Wrath of Cannes. (Illustrated.)
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Last night at the Commonwealth Hotel in Boston, wine guru Gary Vaynerchuck hosted his WLTV Thunder Show in front of a live audience eager to drink in his wine expertise. The room was packed with geekerati busily multitasking between Twitter, their camera phones and, occasionally, each other. As always, Gary wowed the crowd with wit, humor and stellar wine expertise.
And Gary got a warm welcome from host Dmitri Gunn who replaced Gary V's Jets spittoon with one branded with the Patriots logo. Hilarity ensued.
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To promote its clothing line, fledgling brand NEWYORKESE poured American dollars* onto attendees of Pitti Immagine Uomo, a major fashion event.
The dollars featured the NEWYORKESE logo and the phrase "Tu vuo fa l'americano ma si Made in Italy" -- "you want to be American, but you were Made in Italy" -- the title of a song by Renato Carosone.
CEO Gianfilippo Fontana of NEWYORKESE called the effort part of a "low budget advertising campaign." She added, "Thankfully the dollar exchange was very affordable."
Don't thank us, honey. Thank the Big Man in Office.
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