Smirnoff Ice's Save the Mistletoe is an amusingly long-way-around attempt to say Smirnoff brings people together (just like mistletoe - so stop ravaging innocent bushes).
While we remain unmoved by the plight of the sprig, the execution wins us over. By some curious witch magic the campaign features celebrity supporters that we thought were long dead or had found joy in covert day jobs. Natalie from The Facts of Life, Lisa Turtle from Saved by the Bell, Tiffany who crooned "I Think We're Alone Now" and even the Soup Nazi band together to protect the kissing plant from further appropriation by brute force.
That's not all. Kevin at PR Blog divulges having seen a swamp-like creature that was actually supposed to be mistletoe, getting heckled by children at a nearby ice rink for love of the campaign. We wonder which sponsoring celebrity burn-out he happened to be. We put our money on The Incredible Hulk.
In Sydney, to celebrate Christmas, MTV got a crowd of restless people to litter...oh wait...tag the side of a building with 2,000 magnetic LED lights. They turned the whole thing into a video as only MTV can. Looks like it was fun. Not sure though. Though we do wonder what is was like for the people, if any, living in the building to be pelted by 2,000 magnets.
Who needs chimes or bells to create Christmas carols when you have beer bottles instead? Yes, Amstel has come up with an inventive promotion that fits perfectly with the holiday season. In New York's Union Square today, a group of carolers delivered holiday tunes by blowing on beer bottles filled to various levels to make the right sounds. Giving something back while selling. Nice.
- Lost Planet thinks they've made a trailer for their Xbox 360 game that'll shatter cultural norms, change lives and trigger brain aneurisms on-sight. It's a fair trailer but it won't look that great six months from now when some other game has kicked its ass, as these things tend to go.
- Fledgling supermarket Bloom cozy up with agency BooneOakley to make a real-live gingerbread house in South Carolina (of all fucking places)! And yes, we will help them eat it.
- News from our incognito buddy FishNChimps: Coke steals from actual creative people. That always leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And considering they've been riding the holiday polar bear thing and/or copying Pepsi's campaigns for the last two hundred years to the nth degree, that really came as no major shocker. To witness the fuckage of other creative companies, hit Urban Counterfeiters.
- Join NPR's first-ever holiday craft contest before it is gone. Forever. Perhaps you can beat the cleverly rendered Mel Gibson menorah. Yeah, you heard us. A Mel Gibson menorah. Craftwise, it could be unbeatable.
- SAB Miller's Columbia by Bavaria beer is raffling off the famed "Man Smoking" painting on February 28 as part of a promotion.
- Southwest Airlines...blah, blah, blah...CGM contest...blah, blah, blah...YouTube...blah, blah, blah...win a trip...blah, blah, blah and blah.
- AdJab is as pissed off as we are about people labeling things viral before they actually become viral.
- George Parker is all over Julie Roehm's ass crapping on her supposed avalanche or job offers, delivering the inside story on Draft/FCB's lack of promised analytics skills and poking holes in the Advertising Age Jonah Bloom "in-depth" Julie Roehm interview. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
Duvall Guillaume launched a bizarre campaign for animal rights group GAIA in Belgium. It's called Pigs in Pain. From the PR guy's letter:
"In Belgium, five million piglets are castrated without anaesthetic every year. The cries of agony of these piglets are unbearable. Yet our government still pretends not to hear it. In spite of promises they made 3 years ago to ban the cruelty."
With that in mind they created a pop group called Pigs in Pain. Their single, which was actually released on the radio, consisted of pigs screaming in inexplicable agony. It made our ears bleed. Clever way to get animal angst out to the public. So read the requisite blog, watch the music video and share in the plight of Belgian pigs. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
It's rare we receive a press release that isn't rife with orgasmic marketing blather and seems more concerned with "appearing" intelligent than actually being intelligent so we were pleased to received this straight forward release from Arnold touting their new leather billboard work for Timberland. We're so happy we don't have to sift through this release like so many others simply to find, among the thousands of words, the hundred or so that actually say anything that we're just going to reprint the thing here:
"Today, Timberland started posting billboards made of its iconic (Ed: OK, "iconic" might be a bit over the top) boot leather in three New York City boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx. Over a two-day period, local artists representing each borough will adorn the billboards with original artwork reflecting what the borough means to them. (Ed: a little squishy but we'll let it pass) The goal of the project, created by Arnold, is to create a platform for artists to express themselves and their passion for community, using the Timberland boot as canvas. (Ed: Easy now. It's just a billboard.)
more »
To support the launch of Prison Break on the Portuguese FOX channel, Portuguese agency Torke created a guerrilla-style outdoor campaign with a band of chained prisoners walking the streets, posters with images of the show's cast placed behind the bars or windows and fences and small headshot posters and cards placed in shops. Accompanying the campiagn was a press kit a hidden spoon and a prison blueprint. See it all here.
While the explanatory video sucks and is five minutes longer than its 6:05 length presents, we like this Kansas City shovel installation St. Louis-based Rogers Townsend did for its pro-bono client Outreach International. Under cover of darkness, a team planted hundreds of steel and wooden shovels in and around one of the city's parks to call attention to the organization's work it's done around the world. It was, seemingly, a fitting analogy for Outreach International and by several accounts, garnered a good deal of notice and media coverage. We're sure the local Home Depot and Loews were quite happy to sell out all their shovel stock for the cause.
While we love innovativly creepy ad placements such as this strong man elevator installation for Gold's Gym, we have to agree with Shawn who notes it'd be a bit weird to step into this particular elevator with your client, or anyone for that matter, and not laugh or giggle a bit.
Formed in early October by NightAgency, the adverband RockDotRock is now out with their new video that promotes Norton Confidential for the agency's clint Symantec. We're no music expert so we're going to leave this wide open for you readers to comment on. Is this good? Is it bad? Are Adverbands the wave of the futer? Is is marketing gone crazy? Do tell.
|
|
