- Havas Digital has partnered with global social graph mapping company Media6Degrees to help the agency "integrate consumer insights with hyper-targeting and provide increased value for their advertisers." Damn, that was mouthful!
- Mullen has reeled in the American Diabetes Association account and has signed a three year contract with the organization.
- In the UK, they stick human beings inside vending machines to sell Kit Kats. Those witty Brits!
- Crispin Porter + Bogusky does the celebrity magazine thing for Old Navy.
- Not anywhere near as inspired as the Where the Hell is Matt Harding videos, this following "Winfomercial" attempts to...I don't know...turn a game show into a commercial?
- In case you needed even more proof America is the kingdom of the superficial, check out this Sarah Haskins Target Women video about skin care products.
If you've seen one Sony Bravia ad, you've got the blueprint for all of them: seize upon the easiest way to illustrate a product's raison d'etre, then magnify, until the crowd whose attention you so wistfully coveted has been submerged by your idea.
"Zoetrope" is no different -- and just as compelling as its predecessors. (See "Bunnies," see "Thread," see "Bubbles.")
For Sony's Motionflow Bravia TV, Fallon/London built the world's largest zoetrope: a rotating montage of static images viewed through small slits. (See? More fodder for Guinness.)
We got teaser material for the work last December. It was filmed a month prior in Venaria, near Italy's Turin. View the spit-shined final product below.
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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.
Kia's takes its Soul to the streets with help from UK-based CURB, a company whose modus operandi it is to develop nothing but eco-friendly ads.
Dirty pavements in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham will be "spray-cleaned" with the silhouette of a Soul and a link to shapeyoursoul.com, where you can win a soul of your own. (We're trying not to read too deeply into this, especially since we like kicking puppies, carving random initials into young trees and vandalizing any and all likenesses of Regis Philbin.)
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Every once in awhile you come across some viral propaganda that's actually pretty neat, actually. (Consider.)
Hoping to reignite the sleeping flames of The Watchmen comic series fans, Rubber Republic launched a YouTube channel to populate with retro news stories.
Commentary's mostly favourable and views are high: all signs of happy viral life. People seem impatient for more news stories to appear as the public release of The Watchmen draws near. (In theatres March 6, boys and girls.)
We're suckers for an elaborate backstory, so this is some pretty cool shit. Hopefully the film will maintain the same fidelity to the spirit of the original comics.
Find more goodies -- including a retro game, widgets and all the necessary social network tie-ins -- at thenewfrontiersman.net. One of the videos has also been posted below.
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On Friday the 13th, Warner Brothers corralled a bunch of black cats together, covered them in Fear 2 swag and let them loose in London.
The object was to catch the attention of superstitious pedestrians as they avoid sidewalk cracks and ladders and whatnot.
Nice way to get attention. From your target demo though? Ehhh.
Off-topic, is it possible to train a cat to walk in a leash? Huh. Guess so.
"Muscovites have been puzzling over a series of vaguely Warhollian posters appearing in subway stations. The 'product' being presented is called Amerikanskoye Salo, which translates to 'American Lard' or 'American Fat.'
Judging from the poster, it has several culinary uses, including chocolate-covered lard and lard drizzled with borscht."
According to Read Russia (linked above), Russian business newspaper Kommersant claims this American Lard thing is a propaganda effort by political party A Just Russia, which wants to draw attention to the sick, unhealthy interior beneath the US's tasty veneer (edible or otherwise). Others claim it might be a viral effort to promote a book, and at least one civilian believes this really is just a new food product.
"Sigh. Propaganda here used to be so simple," the author laments. Yeah, we know the feeling.
Then again, LA Gear has never been the sharpest tool in the marketer shed.
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- Speeding could turn you into Haley Joel Osment.
- The Marijuana Policy people are boycotting Kellogg's for firing Phelps for smoking pot, even though he's been nailed in the past with a DUI. They feel this is hypocritical because pot doesn't necessarily kill; it just makes you real, real sleepy.
- So Good is boycotting Kellogg too, as is HuffPo.
- Guerrilla Comm rebrands.
- Twitter to charge brands for use. No word on how.
- Dame Edna for MAC.
- French billboard rage.
- Radiohead licensed House of Cards one of its songs to a homeless shelter for an ad, dubbed "House of Cards," that breaks this month.
A valuable lesson from Cisco: it doesn't matter who you are or what you're selling. Like Hallmark and Disney's made-for-TV movie department, you can turn any holiday to your advantage.
In this case, Cisco takes cheesy expressions of Valentine's Day love and wraps them around its ASR 9000, "the first in a new series of edge routers in nearly a decade" -- and more importantly, the fourth way to say I love you.
The video is presently circulating YouTube with FIVE out of FIVE stars! so far. It's the culmination of a months-long campaign in which pseudo-reporter Ira Pumfkin roamed Cisco's halls in pursuit of a big story. See the blog at Tech Edge Weekly (the link also appears at the end of the vid).
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