Wow, people are getting way into this reverse psychology thing. We have faith that the method is likely to work for gamblers if it works for anybody, considering they have lots of practice playing the contrarian with irate bill-paying spouses.
Former gambler Hoyt Monroe gets tapped by Pala Casino, Spa and Resort in Southern California to serve as manchild - er, poster boy for a counterintuitive series of casino ads.
The campaign site is called How Not to Win and when you click on casino games you get an earful of Hoyt suggesting what you should do instead, like hitting the supper table instead of the blackjack table, woo-hoo!, that kind of stuff.
If for some reason you're inclined, catch more Hoyt on Youtube. M&C Saatchi, Los Angeles are guilty for this one.
We don't really know what to think about this banner ad for Portrait Professionals but every time we see it we're gripped with a sense of alarm. The girl at left doesn't look bad now, but you have to experience the ad by accident to achieve the full effect.
The before image flashes frenetically - maliciously, even - and is replaced by the after one, but not until after having destroyed an otherwise soothing browsing experience.
Plus, there's something unsettlingly Dorian Gray about taking a mildly menacing photo and replacing it with a timid, disarming one. Suddenly we distrust all our hard-earned social networking friends.
It had to happen and who better to do it than Axe. We're sure you're familiar with Alex Tew's Million Dollar Homepage phenomenon that actually did make a million and with the thousands of other copycats that made nothing close. Now, Axe has done what it does best: find a way to work a scantily-clad babe into every piece of marketing they do with their own million dollar homepage-ish effort. While we think Smash My Viper did a similar thing better with their own collection of scantily-clad babes, this Axe effort has extended itself to answering machine foolery and a video in which a Portuguese Brazilian model strips on webcam. This being YouTube, and not Dailymotion, she, of course, does not strip all the way down to nothing. No matter, the 15 year olds will love this one.
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OMG OMG. We are so on board Catholic Mobile. There's no hold queue for prayer, is there?
Merci to Bill at Make the Logo Bigger. "Make your phone ... 100% Catholic too." It really doesn't get any better than that.
Give us a rosary with built-in white earbuds and we'll be set. Set.
Adverblog tips us off to the weird new website for Trident courtesy of agency AKQA, whose revamp falls neatly in line with other navigational works of whimsy we've seen lately (1, 2, 3).
We initially explored the site to try hunting down the Teletubbie-looking guys from the Adverblog illustration, but after six wasted minutes clicking all over the place we called it quits in disgust and disdain.
It's a lot of bells and whistles wrapped around a PowerPoint presentation. Really, everything leads back to a dull, almost clinical pop-up or pull-down checklist of Trident benefits.
The ever-present chattering teeth bug us the most, though. They follow you everywhere.
Now here's one for the ladies and for everyone else who enjoys watching ripped men take their clothes off in a locker room. Oh yes, there's the occasional female prancing about as well but she keeps her clothes on. Clearly, this is not Virtual Bartender. Silly Girl Ariel points us to the new Levi's Lady Style site where the latest female denim styles can be checked out while ogling men seductively preparing to take a shower. Apparently, it's not all that exciting as Ariel dubs it's presented "in the most yawn-garnering fashion."
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Lollapalooza kicks off August 3-5 with an awesome line-up including Modest Mouse, Lupe Fiasco, Pearl Jam, Daft Punk, Interpol and others.
Heavily sponsored by AT&T, which wants really badly to shake its rotary vibe in favour of something more Cingular, the event courts Palooza enthusiasts by inviting one and all to "tell us what you'd like to see, hear, eat, feel, drink, buy or hug." (Because it's not just any Lollapalooza, it's your Lollapalooza.)
To whet the appetite, throw together a PaloozaHead, an animated widget that features your face or a mash-up of favourite band members. Yes, it's creepy but no creepier than anything else already out there. (That Mel Gibson menorah still gives us the shakes.)
Watch for the laggage, though. We checked the backs of our computers at least four times to see if someone had wedded us back to 56K as some sort of nasty joke.
Fame is fickle. Snubbed at a casting call for a recent Air Canada ad, some disgruntled geese launch a weird online campaign that covers all the requisite Web 2.0 bases:
Myspace
Flickr
Youtube
Friendster
LinkedIn
AllRecipes (This was probably going the extra mile.)
Oh, and in case you wondered what the point was, it's for a contest to win free tickets. Woo-hoo. The campaign, entitled The Great Migration, was orchestrated by Marketel.
And the giant gets even bigger. Google has acquired DoubleClick. With this acquisition, Google obtains something it didn't have before: entry into the world of display advertising, the ad serving that goes along with that and the close relationships Double Click has with advertisers, publishers and agencies. That one phone call ad buy gets ever closer. Along with the deal, Google gets affiliate marketing company Performics, which DoubleClick recently acquired, further boosting Google's own recent launch of a CPA service.
We clicked. We waited. We clicked. We waited. We saw the guy scream. We clicked. We waited. We saw the tree. We clicked. We waited. We waited. We waited. We...oh just go experience it for yourself. Really. Trust us. You'll love it. Compliments of Weiden + Kennedy for Electronic Arts' Burnout Dominator. Obviously Firefox 2.0 doesn't like this site. Oh wait. It's supposed to do nothing. Right?
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