The creative minds between Kazaa and Skype bring us Joost, which, like previous offerings, merits a pronunciation lesson: "yohst," not "juiced," according to AdCritic. We think we liked it better when it was The Venice Project. Then again, the founders' names aren't any easier: Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom.
Joost makes it so you can watch TV on the internet. That's one less excuse for getting out of our cushy desk chairs. Now all we have to do is eliminate the need to walk to the fridge. Friis and Zennstrom, you're working on that, yeah? Try to make the name easy to pronounce. Better yet, make it so we only have to twitch our faces to convey the idea to one another. Once the movement of our limbs becomes totally elective, we'll want to get rid of language next.
Update, 1/26/07: Joost's PR firm just informed us that, contrary to AdCritic's opinion, Joost is pronounced "juiced" and not "yohst." Glad we got that settled once and for all.
The Army/Ad Council Boost Up effort skyrockets in our ratings of deserved abuse with this awkwardly-phrased, melodramatic, grammatically awful and typo-ridden explanation for Boost Up's mission.
We're sure they're sincere in suggesting that inside every one of us is a graduate. But clearly a high school graduate does not a good editor make. Well, guess that's what the military - er, college - is for.
Everybody likes a virgin-turned-vamp and a chick who undresses while talking. Mitchum takes these patently American communication strategies to colour the Mitchum Man Man-o-Meter, where Nina the "no-sweat" girl gets sillier and sexier as rankings climb.
So you know, Adrants nailed a 95. (Given the choice, don't compare your manliness to Shaq. Nina knows about the genie movie.)
Mitchum also does the usual strip-tease one better with viral outtakes which you can check out here and here. Speaking from the less testosterone-enriched sex, we confess we like Nina 10 times better knowing she laughs at her own lame come-hither jokes and gets snarky with the back-end guys. Nina rocks well, and not just because she strips without giving us that don't-eat-meat insanity.
You know when you watch a friend do something so stupid you wish you were never born so you could never have seen it? That's the feeling that flooded us when we saw Pizza Hut's latest social networking snafu: the uncool-but-cool pizza delivery guy.
Even if you forgive the use of Incubus' Drive, the pretentious article-preceding-name ("The Ted" - why not go all the way and call him The Tedster?) and the awkward "Who I'd like to meat?" joke, you have yet to account for gratuitous use of words like "babe-licious" and "par-tay."
Let's not forget the use of seedy come-ons like "In a court of girls, I'm the prisoner, not the judge ... and I've been very, very bad." The page in general is so wince-worthy that the very thought of pizza afterward made us throw up in our mouths. Way to go, imc2!
For a marketing trend to be legit, Nike jumps on board and makes it legit, letting everybody else make mistakes before it swoops in with its gigantor marketing team and victorious hear-me-roar worldview.
To illustrate, they improved on Dove's decent but docile Real Beauty campaign, not just representing imperfections but embracing them with manic ferocity, even writing little manifestos about the merits of thunder thighs - which would be crazy-lame if done by anybody else but Nike.
So it's apt that they call their take on consumer-generated ads The Second Coming. And instead of begging for whatever you can pull out of your ass (a method yielding only ironic or lackluster results), they've wrapped an iron fist around the potential outcomes.
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Either Kevin Bacon has a great sense of humor or he finally got sick of the whole "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" and decided to cash in. Adland received a promotional email from "Kevin Bacon" promoting a program called Six Degrees which "makes it easy for you to raise awareness and support for a charity that's important to you." The email urges recipients to make their own Six Degrees AIM page to highlight charity an individual is interested in and promises to help the individual raise money for that charity. It's a social networking play that's a nod to the "six degrees of separation" thing that was, itself, social networking before it was called social networking.
As Adland properly states, the choice of Kevin Bacon is the "best choice of celebrity spokesperson for 2007." We'd have to agree.
Following its belief that exposing oneself to great ads from other advertising professionals will better one's own creativity, Ad of the World, with help from JWT Bangkok, has launched a promotional campaign that highlights how copying...uh...acknowledging others great creative will results in great creative of one's own.
To be fair, inspiration is a powerful motivator that fuels creativity. knowing what others have done and why helps align one's own creative thinking and, ideally, fosters new, original creativity along the way. The campaign visually illustrates how exposure to, and mashup of, great creative can produce interesting results. We're not sure about that twisted pig, though. See the entire campaign here.
ad:tech has expanded its annual Awards show, moved it from New York to San Francisco and added a People's Choice Award. The awards, which honor online marketing work, will be held April 25 at 5:45 PM during the organization's San Francisco conference April 24-26 at the Moscone North Center. Additionally, ad:tech has added an Executive Panel of Judges (including yours truly) to, apparently, minimize any squabbles that might arise...uh...I mean to lend an air of importance to the event. Altogether, there will be 130 judges examining all the categories.
Also part of the Awards will be the addition of Industry Achievement Awards to honor three long-time industry contributors who have added greatly to the industry as a whole. While the show has a price tag to attend, there will be a full on event with open bar, hors d'oeuvres, entertainment and, of course the awards presentation.
You might be wondering who the odd man at left is. He's Dr. Woodrow I. Lovett, Director for the Institute of Advanced Personhood, or Microsoft's latest attempt to make good on neurotic left-of-center Woody Allen-esque humour. While their Clearification effort invents HANDTOSS, an overachiever disease, the IAP promises solace for such sufferers.
The success of the spoofy sites depend heavily on Demetri Martin, whose latest Comedy Central special was heavily sponsored by Microsoft. We thought Clearification was neat but are now over it. What's Vista got to offer us? We hear it's pretty lackluster. When they can invent a cure for underachieving maybe we'll start paying attention.
Chevy's running Super Bowl College Ad contest draws to a close as February creeps closer. And this teaser for the reality webisode series that started Monday is the sugar they've got to show for it.
By gad, the Chevy Aveo is textured, spacious and roomy? Good use of $5 words. And we love how the ad devolves into a beer-keg yell. These guys are geniuses. Really.
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