Appropriating ads and turning them into fuck-the-man messages is not actually anti-advertising. It's turning an ad into another (granted, irony-rich and possibly more sophisticated) ad.
While like Mortarblog we have serious doubts about the Anti-Advertising Agency's claim that "city dwellers see 5,000 ads per day," we agree that the world out there is oversaturated ad-wise. But in an ideal world, that raises the bar for us - not to become more ostentatious with our messages, but to make them more slow-moving and subtle. In an ideal world, anyway.
We dig what the Anti-Ad Agency's trying to do. It's important to ask questions about the presence of ads in our daily lives. But isn't that what this whole consumer-gen thing is all about? It's our strong suspicion that, short of finding a society bent on ridding themselves of ads, what they truly want are ads on their terms and not The Man's. That's okay with us.
With live concert, billboards everywhere imaginable, a big pretty theme park and yada yada yada.
So ... Vista's still trying to be down with the homies and Second Life's still trying to colonize reality and the internet, all at the same time. Ho hum. Get a first life, Vista.
Isn't it beautiful what hands can do? That's the question VW asks at the end of this Phaeton ad by Grabarz & Partner Werbeagentur out of Hamburg. With a playful instrumental and impressive handplay, Volkswagen draws attention to the potential of hands to do more than grope, play games and spread the flu. This is meant to showcase the notion that the Phaeton is as elaborately handmade, though we're hard-pressed to imagine a set of European craftsmen sitting around adding final details to a VW.
We agree with Motionographer that it's probably not the most effective ad. It's a long, patient watch and these are not prized audience characteristics. But we like the thought, talent and attention to detail that went into putting it together. If ads are the art that will speak in years to come for society today, we'd rather it be Volkswagen's elegant handplay than, well, this.
The Flea and JND Technologies in Mumbai join forces to create an allegedly creative marketing campaign for client Travelport Holidays.
The campaign is a hark back to Evian Detox, which promoted purity by overwhelming websites on which its clean glacial banners sat, except it's much lazier.
The Quietest Place on the Web brings you to a white screen with the following sentences: "Welcome to the quietest place on the Web. The next time the noise of life gets to you, do drop by for a little bit of peace and quiet." The wandering eye then meanders down to the bottom of the page for lack of anything else to do, where it finds a link to Travelport India, another website that's not terribly stunning.
Unless Travelport has a huge demo of people seeking to visit the Tibetan monks or the inside of a padded room, we're just not seeing how this initiative will help them draw vacation clients.
- Advertising Age shifts into high Super Bowl gear with its Full Coverage section of Super Bowl Ads 2007.
- Google's quarterly profits have tripled. Funny how AdSense publishers' profits haven't tripled as well.
- BlogAds has introduced a new ad unit that receives part of its content from an RSS feed. New, fact, figures, product, info and basically anything can be fed into the ad unit in a continually updated manner.
- Yawn. Yet another Grounghog Day promotion.
We are big on the Bond reinvention characterized by Daniel Craig so maybe it's only natural that we'd be mildly iffy about this new campaign by Mazda, which takes the freshly-lit Bond torch out of Craig's hands and puts it in the claws of the usual two-dimensional leather-clad woman who skulks in the dark.
Building on the 12 Second Thriller campaign, which might as well have been a series of Viagra shorts, Mazda brings us Every Drive's a Thriller, boasting two :30 films directed by Luke Scott, Casino and Desert Treasure.
We'd say that we're turned on enough to buy an MX-5, and the whole power woman in black motif is always a bit exciting, but the Zoom-Zoom thing makes it feel a bit silly, a lot like the compressed and cartoony "Hello Moto."
Really. What can't you sell between two long leather-clad legs?
- Former Gawker Founding Editor Elizabeth Spiers, now founder of Dead Horse Media plans to launch several new blogs. One will cover organic living.
- Online ad spending is predicted to increase 18 percent in 2007 while media spend in other media decline.
- If you want the background behind those 20 websites Toy, New York created for OfficeMax, here's the video that recaps the project.
- Apparently, consumers aren't the only ones having trouble understanding a brand's positioning. In a recent Louws Management Corporation study, it was found just 1/4 could clearly articulate their company's brand positioning. Oops.
- Incumbent Riney is out of the Sprint Nextel pitch. Goodby, O&M and Y&R remain.
- Boobs and bikinis are now hawking coffee at coffee shops.
Geico's getting all sorts of mileage out of its rising star, the caveman. He gained fame in the insurance company's television commercials and now Geico is letting us into his home crib-style with Caveman's Crib. Once inside, you can take a virtual tour of the Caveman's apartment as he gets ready for a party he is hosting. The level of detail and the places you can go once inside the apartment is impressive
You've gotta love the answering machine in the kitchen. One of the messages is from Jerry Shannon (from Geico, we assume) in response to complaints the Caveman lodged when he saw himself in a Geico ad as he rode the conveyor in one of the television commercials. Very cool how this is all tied together as an integrated story. Zev Kanter sent is the link and tells us he worked on the creation of this in-house job.
The LAist, now written by the legendary Tony Pierce, tells the story of a Brentwood, Callifornia woman, Sarah, who created an eBay auction to sell herself to the highest Super Bowl ticket holding bidder. The winner would take Sarah, a Chicago Bears fan, to the game and Sarah would be the perfect date for the day. Well, eBay doesn't like people auctioning themselves off so they closed the bid but Axe heard of it and turned it into a promotion.
The company that prides itself in functioning as a woman magnet for men gave Sarah four end zone tickets to the Super Bowl. She's bringing two of her female friends and the fourth ticket is being given away to the man (or woman, we guess) who crafts the most convincing email and sends it to [email protected]. Way to latch on, Axe!
Berlin-based Mairie Beautyman over at Treehugger says the movement to get society more enviro-conscious made some serious inroads this 2006. That's good news. And to illustrate the point there's some pretty yummy imagery:
"Let's play with metaphors and say Green in 2006 was a strapping football player, a quarterback with a helluva arm. This guy got right up in your face, and breathing down your neck, he told you, "I'm not going anywhere." Then, suited up in threads including post- consumer plastic, shod with vegan cleats, he threw his fair-trade-certified recycled pigskin right out of town."
Imaginative. But what's with all this talk? Somebody needs to send a creative team over there so they can do more than just pipe dream these delectable (and yeah, probably also recyclable) scenarios.
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