OMG. Just when we thought we'd written this line for the last time, we're gonna write it again: "Just when you thought every last inch of space had been covered with advertising, yet another appears." Most recently, it was the front of washing machines in laundromats. Now, it's the front of plows to promote Audi Canada's Quattro event which aims to get people into dealerships this week to try ot the vehicle.
Accompanied by radio, print and online, five snow plows were outfitted with signage and painted plows which read, "Winter is Coming" along with the dates of the event. As we've said every time before, it's only a matter of time before someone offers to paint our house for free as long as they can paint a giant logo on the front of the house. Lowe Roche created the campaign.
Arnold has repurposed its wall of rain spot which ran last year in Europe last year into an Americanized, full-on, politically correct, environmentally friendly campaign about Timberland's use of organic materials in its boots and how it's jumping on the carbon offset bandwagon. Carbon dioxide emissions associated with the campaign will be offset by Timberland's purchase of wind power from Western Massachusetts' Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort wind project. We're told the move will be equivalent to not driving 109,000 miles or planting approximately 44 acres of trees.
more »
When we receive an email which reads, "ADK Europe's first campaign for Dutch National Ballet saw the team sneak around the city at night projecting images of a man with a large package and a frightened young woman onto buildings," we wonder just what kind of big package they are referring to. Well, it's not the UPS kind, rather, the men-in-ballet-tights kind.
Anyway, it's one of those images projected on a building sort of campaign that also includes a mobile element. Those who see the projections, posters and other street marketing efforts are directed to call a number which plays, "This is Juliet/Romeo. You are listening to my voice mail. If you have the answer to my heart-felt yearning and can tell me where I can find my beloved Juliet/Romeo, please send me an SMS with details of where you have seen him, so I can go to him right away."
more »
NYC & Company, which serves as New York's marketing and tourism organization, has launched a component at NYC Visit to help tourists feel more local. For the most part the site is a gigantic press release and if it possesses the rhyme and reason its raving PR people claimed, we're not seeing it.
Anyway, the new tourism effort for the Big Apple kicks off with a series of print ads and a TV spot, all of which are posted at the tourism site.
The print ads are explosions of ... just ... stuff and they all make stark statements: This is Entertainment, This is Fashion, This is Food, This is Shopping, and This is Just Another Day.
For the most part you get a Saks Ad Meets Highlights for Kids feeling.
We're not crazy about it. But hey, maybe the ads are amazing when they're three feet long and accosting you from the side of a building.
- Wendy's get all high and mighty with it's new Saatchi & Saatchi-created online promotion for its Hot Juicy Burger!
- We all thought those VW Crash ads were pretty good. Not so much anymore though after seeing this crashtastic ballet-style ad for Renault.
- Dove follows up its Evolution commercial with an equally powerful one called Onslaught in which an innocent girl is pummeled with adult imagery.
- And this week we got even more big boobs from our big boobed Cheerleader friend, Amy, who's doing her best to promote the movie The Comebacks.
- Dutch agency TBWANeboko did a very nice illustration-style campaign for TomTom's Mapshare.
- Leo Burnett grew a a lettuce garden on a billboard in Chicago to promote McDonald's fresh salads. Beautiful.
- Sony unleashed its third Fallon-created commercial. Called Play-Doh, a bunch of bunnies are animated around the streets of New York. Too bad the idea was stolen from an artist.
For a medium that is nothing more than a giant board atop a metal structure, billboards continue to impress with their seemingly endless flexibility. Of course, none of that impressive flexibility would be possible were it not for inventive creativity. Leo Burnett pleases us by proving to us that, yes, there still are new ideas floating around the minds of agency creatives.
While we can't prove no one has ever before affixed a living thing to a billboard before, Leo Burnett's placement of actual, growing lettuce on a billboard in Wrigleyville for McDonald which spells "Fresh Salad" is refreshingly original and, at the same time, simplistically succinct in conveying the intended message.
more »
This just goes to show that holding executive status in the same universe as Virgin's Richard Branson is an increasingly ridiculous job. Janet Stanek of Stand Advertising has committed to spending 30 hours perched on a billboard overlooking a highway in Buffalo, NY.
She was set up there yesterday morning and will remain there until noon today.
The stunt accomplishes (?) three goals: to celebrate Stand's 6th anniversary, raise $30K for Make-a-Wish, and "get out of those interminable Monday morning status meetings." We feel you on that one, Janet.
Janet will be tethered onto the billboard with little more than a sleeping mat and a tent (which, we hope, includes a loo). Watch her brave the elements (for the children, no less) at Boss on a Billboard.
Any way we can get a soccer ball up there with her?
Think billboards are intrusive now? Wait until they blemish your picturesque descent of the SF peninsula or the eastern coastline. Our homie Chad just told us about Ad-Air, whose purpose in life is to give us "bird's-eye billboards" along the flight paths of the world's busiest airports.
And because you'll be way above ground when you happen to be scanning it for something pretty to look at, the ads will be about five acres each - about four football fields across.
The billboards will be hoisted onto temporary framing and are virtually "invisible" from the ground. Expect to see the first few this October in Dubai - of course. Any country that can afford to bring snow to the desert will probably leap at the chance to swallow all the advertising it can get.
Bird's-eye billboards. God damn. Do you imagine this is what crop circles are for?
Unleashing the anachronistic term "housewife" or perhaps simply tossing aside silly, politically correct euphemisms like "stay-at-home-mom," Frozen food home delivery company Schwan's claims (in a headline) "Research shows that 95 percent of housewives could use a housewife."
Now, AdFreak picked up on the lesbian vibe toward which this headline hints. We, contrary to what one might assume, believe that, yes, the job of a housewife, particularly if she's a doesn't-stay-at-home-mom needs all the help she can get. Why trek to the grocery store with three screaming brats when you can lock the snots in their rooms, order from Schwan's and down a gallon of Cookies 'n Cream while issuing missives via laptop to the hundreds on minions you oversee at the office from the comfort of your couch? Minneapolis agency Hunt Adkins created the campiagn.
We'd like to express our sincere appreciation for the creative and media teams behind this Gucci wallscape in New York City for the brilliance behind integration of media and creative. They actually worked together! When does that ever happen?
Placement doesn't get much better than this. Of course, the placement and creative could be a coincidental anomaly but we're going to ere (is that how you spell it?) on the side of optimism and give the creators here the benefit of the doubt. Unless, of course, someone wants to step forward and admit it was, in fact, purely coincidental.
|
|
