Here's a creepy twist on the American Psycho premise.
You're in the Chinese laundry. Some hotshot white executive walks in and starts heckling the pitiable Asian owner in front of his family. He makes the nasty requisite Pokemon and Hello Kitty jokes, does the grating "oriental" accent. Things are clearly spiraling out of control.
Suddenly, a black dude in the background takes a call on his Jawbone Bluetooth headset. And in a noise-canceling orchestration Bose would be proud of, the world beyond his convo is efficiently muted.
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OMFG! Finally, something not Super Bowl-related. When we head over to our fellow industry ad rag, Advertising Age (OK, it's far from a rag), we are usually in search of some specific article or reference that's been made. For some reason, early this morning, we headed directly to AgAge.com and were presented with one of their full page interstitial ads. We usually quickly click "Skip" (which, of course has some kind of built in delay forcing you to few the ad for about five seconds anyway) but at the sight of the deliciously captivating Christini Ricca lounging in the back of a limo reading Conde Nast's W, we became transfixed and couldn't turn away.
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We were lurking through various social networks when we saw a brush flutter invitingly over the ad at left. "Ooh, will we get to play with make-up?" we thought, because you're never too old to Crayola the crap out of a perfectly good face.
But after several attempts to engage the ad we realized the animation existed solely to distract us, not encourage our creativity.
Bummer. Then we thought, "Hey, clever. 'Better than bare.'" Bare Escentuals is the big contender in the mineral-based make-up market. So the ad at left (for Raw Natural Beauty, whatever that is) effectively does three things:
- Draws (our) eyes to it
- Takes a subtle jab at a big-ass competitor
- Reminds women everywhere that leaving home without make-up will incite head-turns of quiet disdain from everyone within a thirty-foot radius
Thanks a bunch, Raw Natural Beauty.
Media Post says GoDaddy might do two spots instead of one. One will be a spot where some people talk about "beaver" and that "too-hot" Exposure spot.
The other one, which was approved by Fox amidst the beaver nonsense, is called White Light. Some geeky dude who spends Super Bowl Sunday registering domain names is rewarded by the appearance of a white light, out of which leaks a Hooters girl disguised as a GoDaddy cheerleader, and really really cheesy music that will make you wish GoDaddy folded in the '90s dotcom boom.
Ready to come into the light? Embrace it here (teaser only). There's a "too-hot!" director's cut available too.
Just more contextual ad placement awkwardness, except this one gives us an unpleasant P.C.-triggered "ick" feeling.
The Adrants reader, who found the image on the Spanking Art Wikia, observed the Verizon pink RAZR ad was "Probably triggered by the 'pink' cheeks of the physically abused cartoon child."
"Duardo's Brand," which has a UGC feel to it (don't tell Subway!) is Raging Artists' attempt to (possibly) accomplish two things for its client:
1. Associate Arturo Fuente Cigars with the elite Cuban crowd through its choice of talent, Duardo Cantana
2. Put cigars back in the domestic space -- into the mouths of men sitting around playing guitars, and men whose wives batter them senseless for smoking indoors
Or it might be an exercise in irony. Because it's kind of "ha-ha, laugh with this artist who's just like me and you" funny and sort of "ha-ha, laugh at this thrown together wannabe UGC crap" funny.
We don't really know.
If you're into Barak Obama, you owe it to yourself to head over to YouBama and create a video in support of the candidate. On the site, there's hundreds of supportive videos from regular citizen, celebrities like George Clooney and from Obama himself.
Oddly missing are all those supportive Obama Girl videos.
Online ad network AdBrite would like the Super Bowl-obsessed advertising industry to know an advertiser, using the company's full page ad unit, could buy 100 million impression for just 20 percent of the cost of a Super Bowl Spot. While AdBrite is clearly aware a buy such as this can't rival all the fanfare and added publicity that goes along with appearing in the Super Bowl but it is indicative of online media's ability to deliver mass messaging along with highly targeted messaging.
As cost efficiently as the math works out on an AdBrite buy, much of what is gleaned (or lost) from a Super Bowl buy is the accompanying press play that is closely wrapped with the package. ALL one has to do is take a look at what GoDaddy does every year in this area.
Damn, eBillme jumps fast on a trend. An hour after we heard about the Subway/Quiznos UGC-related lawsuit, eBillme jumped online and wrote a press release about the lawsuit in light of its previous Shopping Confessions contest and upcoming Valentine's Day contest.
Stats on the V-Day contest: submit videos on your best or worst Valentine's Day purchase by Feb 14. Prizes includes a 37-inch Toshiba LCD HDTV.
President and CEO Marwan Forzley, eBillme quickly added, is available to discuss user generated content and "help companies level the playing field," which we guess means "run a successful UGC contest while covering your ass."
Now here's an ad that, shall we say, stretches the truth...oh just a wee bit. Not much else to say about it other than it appears on Digg which has had quite a few ads of questionable validity over the past few weeks or so. Bigger image here.
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