"I was immediately attracted to the idea of turning the movie screen into a kind of mirror to the audience," says Chris Hutsul of Soft Citizen, referring to the spots he directed for the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF).
They're smart, funny and unexpectedly existential -- but also familiar, because you see yourself in each of these snapshots: your rage at late-coming friends, your perplexity toward abstract cinema, or the way some foreign films turn you into an overthinking, turtleneck-sporting douchebag. With a ponytail.
o The Overanalyzer
o The Foreign Film
o The Seat-Saver
o The Front Row
o The First Question
o The Die Hard
They end neatly -- gratefully, even -- with the words "We're glad you're here." (So glad, in fact, that they -- meaning VIFF -- have also given you a game to play. It's an amusing one-time distraction, enough of an experience to leave you feeling good, post-chortle.)
Agency: TBWA/Vancouver. Soft Citizen produced, Secret Location assisted with interactive production.
Apparently Viera plasma and LCD TVs are so awesome that you'll leap tall buildings and whatnot just to sit your ass down in front of it. Okay, maybe not tall buildings but motorists at least.
By IBD Brands/Mumbai for Panasonic.
WONGDOODY brings retro effects and electonica beats to No Stank You, a fervently trendy effort to keep teens in Washington from smoking.
A dance-off sets the stage for the first spot. Each team consists of a person and a disembodied set of lungs. One set's healthy; the other looks like the tattered black pieces of a deflated life vest.
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Encouraged -- but apparently not inspired -- by the success of its talking stain Super Bowl spot, Tide to Go solicited users for their own talking stain ads earlier this year.
YouTube's emceemiko won that contest. His spot -- where a rapping stain mocks an interview candidate -- appeared during the Desperate Housewives premier. The low-budget feel made it instantly recognizable as CGM, but the rap was surprisingly good -- even relatable! -- so I guess sometimes it pays to ask Main Street to do Mad Ave's job.
Part of doing Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years "properly" is reflecting on how they've been done before, a cultural habit that primes everybody for Memory Lane. That's why the holidays are a perfect time to bang out some pop culture nostalgia, wrap a tagline around it and call it an ad.
Under year-old slogan "The Magic of Macy's" (JWT/NY), Macy's cashes in on these sentiments by leveraging its long brand history. Check out this patchwork quilt of "Macy's" mentions in movies and shows like Charlie Brown, Family Guy, Seinfeld, I Love Lucy and Miracle on 34th Street (which I watched every Christmas as a kid!), among others.
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Pop your number in at White Castle's Crave is Calling campaign site to get random food-related calls on your phone at odd hours. It's kinda like having an aimless 17-year-old friend with the munchies.
Work by JWT. Users can also shoot the end of a Crave ad -- typical food porn-type stuff -- and upload them onto YouTube. So far only one submission has been made this whole summer, so either the campaign sucks or the copyright Nazis strike again.
Here's a :60 spot that'll flash you back to Schoolhouse Rock. It's called "A Little Change Will Do Us Good," released for Gulf Power by agency Luckie & Co. Animation by Z Animation/Dagnabit out of Atlanta. (Don't worry, there's nothing remotely Sheryl Crow-ish about it.)
The ad encourages citizens to save energy while demonstrating how Gulf Power is doing its part. Supporting efforts include print, outdoor and subsite ChangeWillDoUsGood.com, though that doesn't seem to be working right now. The ad campaign debuts Monday, so I'm positive the site'll be up by then.
Simple, G-rated, retro -- and consistent across media. Good stuff.
UPDATE: The folk at Luckie & Co. say the site will be up by tomorrow, fingers crossed.
An atrocious "Top Model" poster, a diabolically clever "Dexter" campaign, a witty "Chuck" ad, an insanely Candyland-looking "Biggest Loser" promo and an all-too-sleepy "Fringe" billboard are among the 25 best and worst fall TV "key art" ads bluntly critiqued and graded in a slideshow on Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed blog.
The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd tells us, "Project was inspired by sitting in LA traffic, looking at the annual fall deluge of TV ad billboards and thinking it might be interesting to review the most compelling ones."
Check it out here. One of my favorites, Gossip Girl is first up.
European mobile carrier Orange has this pay-as-you-go program that lets users define their own reward system. To promote it, Fallon/London tapped Reuben Sutherland of Joyrider, who came up with "Grabber."
In the spot above, transparent orange balloons, shaped like random animals, float enchantedly up toward the skylight of a factory building. (This setting was labeled "timeless," which I guess is true, given that we never quite run out of deserted warehouses.)
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- T-Mobile debuts first Google Android phone, thereby changing face of mobile forever, etc., etc.
- Wieden and Starbucks break up.
- Wrigley sells advergaming goldmine Candystand to Funtank. No word on why the service, which CEO James Baker of Funtank called "great viral marketing," was sold. Maybe it was just time to cash in.
- Biggie Smalls hits the big screen. "Too bad we're not in middle school anymore," says a twenty-something colleague. "I'm imagining the tears ... and the hugging."
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