As the economy struggles out of the hinterlands of recession and Just General Suckiness, Volkwagen takes advantage of the French's irresistible inclination to remind the world it knew better all along.
Witness while a group of compulsive junk bond junkies try ridding themselves of their nasty addiction. Think AA, except with tailored suits instead of flannel.
Our favourite is "Exorcist," possibly because purging unregulated capitalism is the closest we'll ever come to watching a businessman give birth: "SUBPRIME! Dol-LARRRRR..."
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Boy do we have a spot for you. Nescafe's "More Beans, More Taste" features "over one tonne of beans," shooting into the air a la the Bellagio Fountains, to the tune of "Che interminabile audirivieni" from comic opera Don Pasquale.
The weird thing is, for something with all that going on, it just kinda falls flat. Maybe it's because watching dancing water isn't that fun in the first place, and is really only marginally so in person. Or maybe it's because it's Nescafe.
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Not completely sure what to make of this one. For pizza franchise Mr. Jim's, AdWise put together this weird ad where founder Mr. Jim goes head-to-head with "Doughby," his dough-making robot.
In the space of :30 they start randomly arguing about whether it's dough, or "the toppings and the crust!", that makes a pizza great.
But given that crust is composed of dough, and the company slogan is "It's the crust!", I guess Doughby wins. Or both win. Or maybe it doesn't matter, and we should all hit Pizza Hut for some stuffed-crust action, because that's really more our speed.
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Two days ago we mentioned Radiohead was donating one of its songs to a homeless shelter. Last night we got the footage.
The song is Videotape from In Rainbows, but the ad itself is called "House of Cards" -- the name of another In Rainbows track. Only the melody is used, adding an urgent tempo to a panning shot of a city, where a number of homes and skyscrapers are composed of cards that slowly begin to plummet.
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The Ad Store just sent us a plethora of new Zappos spots for spring/summer and fall/winter 2009.
"Step into Zappos" picks up where "Put a Little Zappos in Your Day!" left off. The latter featured a chipper delivery guy bringing sunshine and rainbows to a neighborhood; these spots riff off the glee infusion you get when you finally open that package.
Underpants-clad customers are pictured either standing in a Zappos box or walking into one. Putting on their best Vanna Whites for the camera, they either reveal their purchases or lift the box over themselves -- at which point they are suddenly transformed into fully-dressed Citizens of Society.
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The new Kia Soul is so compelling you will want to look deeper. And to depict this in the most obvious way possible, Publicis/Toronto came up with "Peer Into a Soul."
Each spot tackles the concept with a different film genre, a gimmick meant to appeal to people who want something more from their car marketers.
The campaign DP is Robert Yeoman, who worked on The Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic and The Squid and the Whale, so we naturally expected the pieces to ooze some sub-normal slice-of-lifishness -- like that feeling you get when a joke's been told but was so subtle you didn't laugh, and now all the hipsters know you Do Not Belong.
The humor here isn't quite that sublime (and for good reason -- they're car ads, after all), but the choice of music definitely oozes Yeoman.
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The YMCA is the place to be. You'll get a burn, you'll make really awesome platonic friends, and sometimes clowns work out there. Maybe.
An art director at Preston Kelly sent us the above-linked (and below-embedded) spots for YMCA, which under the slogan "Real people. Real fitness" hopes to reel in new members that:
1. Don't look like porn stars and/or Arnold Schwarzenegger in his 20s
2. Don't make sex noises on the treadmill
3. Aren't complete fitness bunnies
The natural result of this checklist of Things That May Potentially Turn You Off are these spots, where two workout buddies partake of YMCA's fitness buffet while saying quirky "real people" things, like "It's like a bear trap. Except it's a people trap. And the people trap's made of bears!"
Here is the part where you relate, because that guy is simple, and yet hilarious -- like you! Don't be ashamed; we're relating too.
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Heh. To promote the "extra strong" qualities of Alrin nasal spray, Young & Rubicam/Tel Aviv nailed it with "Umbrella" and "Newspaper" -- two spots that demonstrate what happens when your nasal passages get too liberated too quickly.
The human vacuum concept also makes a lot more sense here than it did that one time Justin Timberlake got sucked across town by a Pepsi drinker.
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- "Twitter for sports." And then our eyes rolled back in our heads, and then we died.
- BFFs with the Wicked Witch of the West. She seems fun. DDR, your house or mine?
- The question we all must ask. Sometime.
- Shepard Fairey, the guy who did that Obama/Hope poster we all love to wheatpaste on walls that don't belong to us, gets arrested before his first solo art show. Duuuude. Sux.
- Scroll down to the part that reads "cb with a Flair."
- Intern sweatshop haiku.
Because really, three cyclopses and a wheelbarrow of cash should be all it takes to convince you H&R Block is the tax refund brand of choice.
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