Sorry. Just as we were trying to point out women aren't the only sex objectified in advertising, this ad slaps us in the face and we felt we'd be doing a disservice by not sharing it with you. OK, that's a stretch. We admit this is completely non-newsworthy and, besides, the women look like they are having a good time together in the ad rather than being objectified but still, as our editor keeps telling us, this is not Ad Age, it's Adrants. So, we oblige the master lest he force us to view an endless stream of barely dressed women for weeks on end...with our hands restrained.
Sometimes money doesn't yield the best creative and that was certainly true in this case whereby 42below vodka paid a creative team at Saatchi & Saatchi with truckloads of vodka instead of money for a campaign that is, indeed, very good and just won a Gold Lion at this year's Cannes for print and outdoor. The campaign illustrates, literally, the experiences one will have when drinking 42below vodka. While many of the are, of course sex-related, all are not including one with a Godfather theme and one with a Brokeback Mountain theme. See more here, here and here.
Three helium balloons rose above New York's Bryant Park today in an apparent promotion for, well, something. Flickr user thefangmonster snapped these shots (1, 2)
- Email marketing provider ExactTarget which, yes, advertises on this site, is happy to announce the company's co-founder and CMO Chris Baggot was awarded Best Email Markerting Blog for his blog, Chris Baggot's Email Best Practices.
- More "Get A Girlfriend ads from Axe.
- Advergirl is happy to be a girl and isn't too pleased with Crispin Porter + Bogusky's Miller Lite Man Law campaign. If we were a girl, we'd agree.
- Someday, this industry will figure out contextual advertising but, for now, we will still have to deal with ads for movies called Water placed next to stories about tragic floods.
Inc.com has launched a new outdoor campaign in New York City which will run through August 20th. The company tells us the campaign is intended to target business owners and C-level executives at privately held companies. The ads will appear on 20 public telephone kiosks located throughout the midtown Manhattan business district and will feature copy and artwork explaining what's available on Inc.com. Let's
- This just isn't worth mentioning but it involves a catfight and breasts, two things this publication can't seem to ignore. Our apologies in advance.
- Some train stations to to great lengths to keep their stations clean and they want everyone to know about it.
- We swore we'd never again mention a million dollar homepage but this one is a bit different. It;s selling space on the side of a building. Oh wait. Not an actual building. Just pixels on an image of a building. OK. Sorry. It's just the same old crap with new clothes on.
- It's a pretty good bet Nike wishes this guy was wearing a different shirt.
- From time to time, we all hear those stories about upper management embezzling funds. Mack Simpson has recrafted a story he told us back in 2003 about a CFO at the company who worked for who shot himself after stealing $6.5 million dollars. It's an unfortunate story worth revisiting.
- Sometimes ads are so incredibly bad, there's actually good. This may or may not be one of those times.
- CoBRANDiT has summed up the recent Word of Mouth Marketing conference with a collection of video interviews which include Robert Scoble, Pete Blackshaw and other agency honchos.
Sometimes you really wonder what's going through the mind of a copywriter when stuff like this transit ad are created. The phrase "Don't be afraid to open your mouth" next to "I'm still a virgin" just seems to conjure up something very different than the breath mint ad it's supposed to be.
- AdFreak says two out of the three Sea-Doo films are pretty good. We'll take thier word for it since, like many bloated sites, it wouldn't load well for us. Then again, that could just be our crappy Internet connection. And if you're wondering what Eric Roberts is doing these days. Here's your answer.
- Jack Morton has published a white paper which finds experiential marketing to be more likely to "increase understanding, lead to action and inspire advocacy."
- Nokia is running a blog-based campaign in Toronto and Vancouver to promote its new 6682 phone. The company has promised to send bloggers the phone for free if they qualify (age, blog size, location, etc.)
- An Iowa construction company which is building the Iowa Speeday is promoting the track by outfitting ten of the company's cement trucks with Iowa Speedway decals.
- Crispin Porter + Bogusky's VW Configurator, which was developed in part by IQ Interactive, took home a Cyber Lions Grand Prix.
- It's in French so we're not sure what it's all about but we do know it's for Coke BlaK. We've also seen the hippy-dippy floral/bubble theme before. Yup, we have and it was for Coke's M5 project.
Professing not to know why Nike would do such a thing (uh...hello? publicity), several have complained about a Nike ad featuring Wayne Rooney partially painted red with his arms outstretched. Church groups are likening it to Christ's crucifixion and British MPs think it's horribly war-like. Wieden + Kennedy, creators of the ad, defend it saying it has nothing to do with the crucifixion and was intended to celebrate Rooney's return to his team after an injury.
A Nike spokeswoman explains further, telling the Daily Mail, "If we have offended anyone on those grounds, we would stress it was unintentional and we apologize. It is not meant to be an aggressive picture, either. It was a case of catching the mood of the nation as everyone urges Rooney on to great things, and of course our slogan puts it perfectly. The red paint is not meant to be blood, it's just echoing the body paint which fans cover themselves in and the rest of Wayne's body is painted white. It's the flag of St George, and nothing else. We have had nothing but positive reaction to the poster and a lot of people have been asking if they can buy it. We have no plans to produce it as a poster."
Ah, yes. Another mysterious site with a countdown clock. Don't the creators of these sites, in this case, according to Whois information, Cincinnati Ohio-based hyperQuake, know this has been done a million times before? Do they think we will actually care what the countdown leads to? Are they so bold as to assume there is something unique about what they are about to announce? Oh wait. Of course they do. This is advertising and when we create cool campaigns like this we just know the entire world will be jonesing right along with us.
The countdown site, called Debunkify, is accompanied by a video on YouTube and billboards and TV ads in several Ohio locations. The billboards proclaim, "kill the myths before they kill you" and the site indicates all will be revealed July 10. OMG, we just can't wait. Can you? Yawn.
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