Like a Calvin & Hobbes decal come to life, "Slash" for MTV Switch depicts people pissing in public places. The moral of the story is to "Save water, flush less." (Niiiiice.)
By Ogilvy/London, which has an odd take on persuasion. Wizzing in a fountain is funny -- hell, incendiary -- while you're stoned and around age 15, but unless things have changed abroad, doing it in the Queen's England remains both unsavory and illegal.
There's no accounting for logic in advertising, however. Along with other "green" MTV Switch ads, "Slash" will likely run across 55 TV channels in 162 countries. The track in the ad is Miserere Mei, by Bouwe Dykstra.
MasterCard's "Priceless" is one of those campaigns you wanna milk as long as possible: it makes a statement about what people value, and potential variations are endless.
But the "product, price tag; product, price tag; sentiment = priceless" formula has gotten stale. And unfortunately for MasterCard, competitors like Visa and American Express have taken advantage of its stagnation to launch their own heart-wrenching commentaries on society.
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Holiday Inn takes on an odd feat: convincing people that staying at a Holiday Inn Express will make you smarter.
You'll freestyle like Del the Funky Homosapien, outshine doctors in emergency situations involving Cal Ripken, Jr., and -- if you have the good fortune of conceiving a baby in a Holiday Inn Express -- that kid will be capable of handling sharp objects at close proximity. From birth.
Strange but true. Three ads in a row can't lie.
I dug the rapper spot. The rest were sorta kitschy. Well, the rapper one was kitschy too, but it had that "dream fulfilled!" element to it. How many of us don't want to unexpectedly kick ass in a Lyricist Lounge situation? It's one of the biggest geek fantasies of all-time -- right up there with being proclaimed royal heir to a small island, and being told your Tetris skills might save the world.
"Saved by Zero," a spot for the Toyota Tundra, has run in "seemingly every ad break during NCAA Football, MLB Playoffs and NFL games," claims Rohit Thawani. I suppose that wouldn't be terrible if the ad were good, or even innocuous, but -- get this -- it has a repetitive jingle with an audacious country twang.
You know you're fucked then.
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- Among its minions, BlackBerry brags about celebu-users. How very AmEx. (Props to Adrants reader Atif for this.)
- Droga5 becomes agency of record for method! Kick-ass.
- The McCain campaign asked YouTube to stop taking down its campaign videos. (The videos purportedly violate copyright because many contain snippets of music that the campaign did not have permission to use.) And YouTube was all, "Bitch, please." What, McCain? You're all for Joe Plumber but can't pay licensing fees?
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In "Fridge Magnet," a Guinness truck stops in a Buenos Aires neighborhood, gets all magically magnetic and starts drawing refrigerators to itself.
Notably, one random guy looks down at his glass of Guinness, which appears to be frothing mischievously. There's a beer with some naughty ideas ... and possibly a deep-seated affection for puns. "It's alive inside," the ad concludes -- half-joking, half-not.
By Irish International BBDO. I liked Saatchi & Saatchi's "Spoken Word" better, but "Fridge Magnet" is more in line with the casual "beer" persona. It also manages to pull that off without forsaking Guinness's sense of playful enigma. Nice.
Here's a spot comparing the Chevy Traverse to "a sudden downpour of shoes." It's the latest in a campaign that debuted during the Beijing Olympics. (Remember the ad with the half-nekkid man ironing shirts?)
Facile premise: the Traverse is everything you've ever wanted. To illustrate that point, stereotypes of everything "we've" ever wanted are used. Hot men that iron? A hailstorm of shoes?
If nothing else, this spot's more coherent than the last. In August, I spent at least eight minutes on Twitter trying to figure out Shirtless Man's relation to folding seats.
What better way to get self-conscious Millennials to the ballot than with a bunch of celebs being gratuitously cool, slightly ironic and occasionally almost (but not quite!) deep?
Look, look, it's Bill Maher in a blazer, prattling about elitists. It ends with "Vote for BBQ" -- except BBQ is written in a Mad Libs sorta way, so you know the "vote for" is open to whatever motivation, however bizarre or irrelevant, you've got.
Because hey, that's democracy.
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- Hearst Magazines will close CosmoGirl with the December issue. It first published in 1999.
- CBS has schedule the annual Victoria's ecret Fashon Show to air December 3 at 10PM. It wil take place at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel.
- As only George Parker can, DraftFCB gets some sage advice concerning its penchant for repeatedly tooting its own horn.
- The Ladders takes a unique approach to illustrating the attractiveness of its $100K talent pool.
- Google does the green thing with project 10 to the 100th.
- Citizens Bank customers get happy together karaoke-style. It's bad. Really bad.
- TAMBA is out with Granny Bash Bingo, a game in which granny deflects attacks from a bingo machine which has had enough from its grey haired oppressors.
In what appears to be nothing more than slapping the Green label on Bank of America's Keep the Change program, Citizens Bank has launched the Green$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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