If you switch on the radio at all this season, you might come across a handful of ads encouraging you to buy everyone you know an HD Radio. The rationale is sound and scientific. Hear:
o Why your boyfriend would prefer one to a scarf ... or to nose-hair trimmers
o Why your bookworm sister will love you forever
o How even Santa's getting one
I read up a little on HD Radio and found out songs can be tagged for purchase via iTunes later. Impulse song-hoarding? Neato. It's like a record label's wet dream.
In what appears to be nothing more than slapping the Green label on Bank of America's Keep the Change program, Citizens Bank has launched the Green$ense Campaign which pays customers ten cents for every electronic transaction they make but only up to $10 per month and $120 per year. Even without the facade of "greenery, Bank of America gives up to $250 per year with its program. And people don't even have to be green to get the $250.
Of course it's all to motivate people to bank electronically which uses less paper which, yes, is an admirable "green" effort. But, seriously, the real reason any bank would motivate its customers to bank electronically is to cut overhead (by hiring fewer tellers) and increase profit.
With cutesy headlines like "Being eco-friendly just got eco-nomical" and "The environment is like a bank account. Every little bit helps," the campaign rolls out in print, radio, outdoor and television.
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Mirrors don't lie. That's the tool this Erwin-Penland-created commercial for Clemson University takes. Noting most people don't undress in public, don't humiliate their friends, don't vandalize the campus and don't sleep around, the commercial makes it clear you shouldn't either.
"Our goal with this campaign is to reach people - students and non-students - and make them think about their own behavior," said Vice President for Student Affairs Gail DiSabatino. "There is such a bombardment of advertising that promotes alcohol and sports. This is one attempt to combat those promotions."
It won't be an easy job but the message will be spread across posters, newspaper, radio and video.
Either a brilliant ploy at circumventing the IM/email/Twitter clutter or an odd throwback to pre-email days, a press release arrive via fax - yes, you read right, a fax - touting a new radio campaign from the Marijuana Policy Project. The campaign aims to educate the public about new U.S. marijuana laws and the use of medical marijuana.
Behind the cloud of educational and medicinal benefits, the group's goal - let's be honest here - is to get marijuana legalized. Oh yes, they're all for regulation along the lines of alcohol but what they'd really like is for us all to be able to smoke the stuff whenever we want. Not so surprising they chose to align with alcohol rather than smoking. A good thing. No one wants another crappy truth-like campaign touting the dangers of weed.
The radio spots feature former New Mexico Republican Governor Gary Johnson and California Superior Court Judge Jim Gray.
What, you want to hear the spots? Wouldn't we all but the URL in the fax is unclickable and actually typing URLs into a browser just isn't done any longer.
This is sorta nifty. Motivated by the assumption that youth adopt ideals based on how they're presented, Grey/Madrid launched Compra esta actitude ("Buy this attitude") on behalf of the Madrid City Council.
The effort tells people to save energy by twisting up gimmicks we're all familiar with. Ads were inspired by shampoo and perfume ads, and even those totally improbable amateur online videos.
Creative is divided by medium: Internet, TV, Radio, Grafica. Run a barcode scanner over each to see the work. The image at left is from the shampoo spoof, where a woman with lustrous hair swings it in the direction of a lightswitch and flips it off. And here's the online video they're pushing: "The light pong masters," inspired in part by stuff like "Guy catches glasses with face" for Ray Ban. Expect some heavily edited, totally improbable ping pong action. Yeah, baby, yeah.
Defamer is obsessed with the new Matthew McConaughey-voiced radio spots for the National Cattleman's Beef Association. There certainly is something quirkily-alluring about the way McConaughey intones the spot and in an effort to visualize that, Defamer put together a video to accompany the spot. If you like McConaughey's hotness...and cow meat, you'll love this video. Be sure to appreciate the awkwardly-worded copy "Discover the power of protein in the land of lean beef," which paints a picture far different than what was likely intended.
Some storks bring you babies. But watch out for the one with the glasses; he's got nothing but pickles.
Publicis & Hal Riney/SF is helping to reposition reinvigorate pickle company Vlasic and its 34-year-old stork icon. The stork's personality was modeled off Groucho Marx and appears in current TV ads* as a quirky friend of the family. Vlasic's tagline was also changed to "That's the tastiest crunch I ever heard."
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Greek station Galaxy 92 made a resonant impression on us in 2007 with "DOGMA," a print campaign where dictators proclaim the merits of music.
But that was then. Galaxy's gone 180 on our asses. "Stop Modern Dogmas," its current ads demand -- in little red buttons! -- over images of brassy, but vapid, constructs of modern worship:
o Celebritism
o Nip Tuckism (at left)
Slogan: "All music. No dogma." No word on how Galaxy92 feels about the ones it invented last year. I imagine they're exempt from scorn -- or else they did very, very poorly amongst the public.
"Stop Modern Dogmas" was put together by Lowe, Athens, the creators of "DOGMA."
Oink Ink Radio needs entries for its 11th annual Dead Radio contest.
"Disheartened copywriters are invited to submit their best radio scripts that have been rejected, passed up, and left to collect dust. Oink then treats the winning copywriter to an expense-paid weekend in either New York or Los Angeles, homes to Oink studios."
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Apparently Heineken has started a radio and (cheese-tacular) TV campaign that directs people to a subsite that isn't even up yet. (We tried. Still doesn't work.)
Try your luck at SharetheGood.com. Jetpacks, who seems sort of traumatized by the radio spot, went out of his way to check the Who Is data behind Share the Good (registered to Brian Citron, Associate Brand Manager for Heinie) and see if it works on other browsers (no).
UPDATE, 10:10 EST: The site is up now. And it only took all morning. Good going, guys.
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