A spankin' new ad for Beatles Rock Band features the Fab Four alive and well, loitering with fans on Abbey Road. There's even an almost-convincingly-cut scene of George Harrison strumming alongside a kid with a Rock Band guitar.
The frothy setting -- utterly devoid of the angst that made them not-a-band-anymore -- melts into animated versions of the Beatles themselves, beating their instruments over the coloured Rock Band bars that tell you what string to hit. Song featured in the ad is Come Together off their Abbey Road album.
No strong feelings of disdain here; it's certainly a lot less callous than that one time Saatchi used All You Need is Love to sell diapers or the time Ben & Jerry's distilled the spirit of John Lennon in a hippie ice cream.
Oddly -- and we might change our minds about this later -- the ad made the notion of bringing the Beatles back as an animated pleasure-band a lot less traumatizing than watching a stilted cartoon Kurt Cobain play marionette for Guitar Hero. It's cheesy, sure, but it could have been a trainwreck.
Identity of the agency behind the ad remains a mystery for now. Word has it there'll be a reveal after the game comes out. Anyway, whoever you are, nice job; we'd be liars if we said the work lacked charm.
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We're not really sure what New Yorkers read to give them that Big City somethin'-somethin', but NBC New York wants the crown for itself.
So it turned to Mother, which in turn conceived "Locals Only," a campaign that spotlights the website's granular take on the city. It's the spots that compelled us to visit the site, where we discovered it's a lot like HuffPo for deep-Manhattanites with a PG palate (more for NBC's sake, wethinks, than for the city's).
Yesterday's big story was a taser-toting robber grandma; today you've got a happy ending to a very old kidnapping story.
We also think the changing header -- "NBC New York [is intrigued by nude models]" -- gives it a personable touch, lending sass to a rag that, while not as gritty as NEW YORK POST, may well hold its own in the city's dense circle.
But enough about the site; let's move on to the weirdos. The punchline's cheap, and the news tidbits at the end feel a little shoehorned in, but the caricatures are wicked.
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...I guess that makes sense, although the five spots featured for Discover's new "Get Back" campaign do occasionally, if feebly, try suggesting you can also "get back" buddy time and family time and youth.
But this really all just comes down to buy more shit.
By the nonetheless well-meaning folks at The Martin Agency. The brand isn't strong in the first place; it's only natural that the message be blurry in equal measure.
The Toronto Zoo has completed a brand-new habitat to accommodate the return of its polar bears. No, not sure where they're returning from, but it must've been some awesome digs because their just-finished gilded cage is 10 acres across and outfitted like the Tundra.
To promote the exhibit, Lowe Roche is disseminating this spot in which a square but well-meaning dude mistakes the habitat for the real thing, then penetrates it and goes off in search of adventure and meaning.
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If you've ever played a massive multiplayer online game -- or at least watched that one episode of South Park -- then you're well-versed in the frustrations of laggage.
Lag is when you're in a crucial scenario in the game, but a crappy connection speed leaves your character in a vulnerable position just long enough to compromise you and your team.
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If the children of celebrity chanteurs can draw a crowd to a promo, why not the children of celebrity talk show hosts?
In an ad slated to debut tonight during ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 14-year-old Wyntergrace Williams will urge Congress to amend the Child Nutrition Act to require the inclusion of vegetarian options in school lunch lines.
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We dug the gimmick this time. And this time. And this time and this time. But this is one saunter-through-time too many.* And we're not standing for it!
Especially for a product like sexier incontinence underpants.
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Inspired, I guess, by the unconditional love Mad Men receives from doting ad creatives, Australian network The Comedy Channel is launching a tongue-in-cheek ad drama called :30 SECONDS.
The show takes place in the present, not the past, which means that while lots of douchey Don Draper types still abound, you also suffer the loss of gratuitous smoking, for which much platinum blonde and gratuitous hipster rumpled-shirtiness is expected to compensate.
Palatable and time-wastey. See McBaney, Martin, Marion, Brooker, Barbara, and Sumo. Also see the print pieces, outfitted with irreverent quotage and shiny creatives.
The campaign, by Sydney's Three Drunk Monkeys, launches August 22; the show itself debuts September 7, 8:30 PM.
Here's a pair of ads for Westwood College, one of those vocational schools where you can get a degree in three years and start your career!
These are more engaging than potshots of nurses taking blood pressure while degree options scroll by. They're a little more casual, and the focus is on the various mundane personalities (and costumes) you take on as you move from dead-end job to CAREER!
And when we say CAREER!, we mean a desk somewhere, which, Westwood fails to mention, is often infinitely less stellar than singing happy birthday songs at TGI Friday's.
Work by Cactus/Denver.
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Throw open that beach towel, get a public service announcement: "You're probably not expecting to drown today." Not especially, no.
Other fun-tastic messages in ideal places include "You're probably not expecting to need a helmet today" and "Being run over while jaywalking only happens to other people."
And here are some highly depressing, but decidedly effective, TV spots. Sobering stuff for preventable.ca by Wasserman + Partners/Vancouver.
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