Commercials for IBM's "Go Green" campaign are all over my daytime TV. In the ones I've seen, corporate suits debate the merits of implementing energy-efficient policies. Once they opt to "go green" (usually for financial reasons), a cartoon forest -- complete with cheerful chirping wildlife and a high-pitched chorus -- blossoms around them. The message is that companies going green, whatever the reason, can change the environment for the better.
Style-wise, the effort mirrors a current Truth campaign where reality is also shattered by musical kitsch and doe-eyed cartoons. (Both are liable to make jaded cubicle cogs long for a vatful of hot smoking Dip.)
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This is HSBC's "Lumberjack" by JWT/London/NYC and production company Gorgeous. At first watch it's like Swiss Family Robinson meets Lord of the Flies, except everybody's grown up and cops ruin all the fun.
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In the first ad released by Crispin Porter+Bogusky for Microsoft, Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld meet serendipitously at Shoe Circus, a Payless ShoeSource-type store. Seinfeld helps him pick out shoes. Made of pleather. Significant glances are exchanged, immigrants gawk, and churros are shared.
Thus ingratiated with one of the world's richest (and thriftiest?) men, Seinfeld poses the question we'd all ask, given the chance (and a serious case of munchies): "Are they ever gonna come up with something that'll make our computers moist and chewy like cake so we can eat 'em while we're working?"
Gates gives Seinfeld a subtle but sassy little ass-shake to denote "yes."
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Aptly called "Melony B." Watch 'til the end -- there's a candy surprise.
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Jamba Juice makes its foray into the grocery aisle with a celebratory ad by Publicis/NY and production firm Stardust. In "Fruit Pixels," a bouquet of berries spring out of a Jamba smoothie bottle and shape-shift into a swinging schoolgirl, a swimmer, a volleyball player and the Jamba Juice logo before slipping back into the bottle, now neatly capped.
Tagline: "Live fruitfully." Hrrrm. The Ting Tings, which sing Fruit Machine in the background, could've given you guys somethin' better than that.
Off-topic, I love how personified energy can be used to promote both hip surgery and fruity beverages.
This year at the Olympics, performance-enhancing athletic gear were all the rage. Four years from now, will it be highly-advanced hips and knees?
"Smith & Nephew introduces the next generation of joint replacements: highly-advanced hips and knees engineered to meet the needs of your high-performance life."
The ad, designed to make active human beings look like fluid ribbons of energy, was produced by Psyop for Ogilvy/NY. I like how it breathes life into an industry normally associated with near-immobile geriatrics ("I've fallen and I can't get up!"). But It also brought Touch of Gray to mind. Sexy grays, bionic hip surgery: looks like advertising's in midlife-crisis mode.
You may remember Robbie Wenger. He won the grand prize at Wrath of Cannes -- yeah, that was him licking the statue -- for Virtual Drinking Buddy, a subsite he created for The Knot.
The theme behind Virtual Drinking Buddy was "never be alone again," and toward that end it provided a classy old boozehound that drinks at your side and occasionally even insults you -- just like a real friend.
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"The generation that swore it would never get old -- didn't. Welcome to the summer of life."
Just for Men has decided to target the Confident Male Boomer, a man so sexy he need not fear his graying head of hair. (Bitch, please! He rocked Woodstock AND he surfs!)
The only question is, is the gray in all the right places? Fret no longer about nature's crude hand; get ahold of Touch of Gray, the only hair dye that lets you "keep a little" salt in that mostly-peppery mane.
That guitar riff sure does set the stage, plus the narrator's got us PUMPED. And the closing guffaw, "Never trust anybody over 90!", coupled with those bad-ass peace signs, won some high-larious backlash on YouTube.
Just when you thought the jingle was dead, Wrigley's broadcasts this catchy rewrite of Chris Brown's Forever for DoubleMint. Doesn't it make you wanna dust off the pink wig and bust out with some liquid?
But that's window trimmings; DoubleMint's also improved its value add. In addition to chew factor, it apparently also:
- doubles as a hacky sack!
- leaves a comet trail!
- comes in slimmer, sexier packaging!
And here we were thinking the brand was a one-trick pony.
It's always a little irksome when a film boasts an "all-star cast," because if THAT'S the card it's playing, there's probably not much else going on.
The Women, a remake of a movie from 1939, has just such a cast. Think Candace Bergen! Annette Benning! Jada Pinkett-Smith! Meg Ryan! Bette Midler! Eva Mendes! It's a walking, talking line-up for the cover of next month's Vanity Fair.
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