Ford, which is sponsoring the singer's summer tour, has aligned itself with Kelly Clarkson and is using her new song, Go, in a JWT Detroit-created :60. The campaign marks the switch from the company's old tagline. "Built for the road ahead" to the new and relatively meaningless tagline, "Bold moves."
There ought to be a rule for taglines. They ought to actually mean something and not be so bland they can be slapped on any brand interchangeably. "Bold moves"? I mean WTF? Are we talking about Bold detergent moving stains out of a shirt? OK, maybe Ford is makming some bold moves here but this tagline is about as descriptive as Intel's lame switch to "Leap Ahead" which sounds like some descriptor for a kangaroo daylight savings time convention. Seems Ford and JWT caught the boardroom brand blather disease.
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The recent Crispin Porter + Bogusky-created Volkwagen Jetta ads in which two Jettas are involved in real accidents filmed in one shot with stunt drivers are reported to have generated positive results. The ads, which began April 10 and carry the tagline "Safe Happens," have, according to Volkswagen as reported in USA Today, increased online dealer quote requests by 58 percent and increased brochure requests though call centers 37 percent and 56 percent through the web. Results happen. Now, maybe, we can all give CP+B a break and realize they do actually create good work. View the ads here and here.
OK, we're back from ad:tech San Francisco, their biggest to date, and we've got piles of backlogged bits for you so here we go, once again. machine gun style.
Exopolis has created a funky website for the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. It's a busy page with all kinds of things to do but that's what the kids love.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada have launched Mobiloke, karaoke for the the cell phone. It's part of a campaign to make milk hip.
Apparently, this is to promote Honda's new civic hybrid and references London's congestions charge.
There's a new film coming called Art School Confidential staring John Malkovich which proves to look very weird but probably not far off from real art school.
Zugara has created another site for Reebok's "I Am What I Am" campaign. Each country's version of the site will feature different athletes and artists specific to that region. For example the U.S site (www.rbk.com/us/iawia) features Mark Zuppan and Carolina Kluft while the U.K. site (www.rbk.com/uk/iawia) features Amir Khan and Ryan Giggs.
Somebody's filed some sort of patent for an Advertising Box that seems to make it easier for marketers to create online ads and for consumers to change and interact with them.
Oxygen Network is promoting it's new Ivana Young man reality dating show with a cheesy video featuring Ivana Trump.
We have no idea what this is but we're sure it has to do with some sort of heartwarming organ donor list thing. We could be wrong.
Ad archive site Ads of the World has launched a forum section.
Lethal has launched a campaign in London for the Honda Civic Hybrid that involves the hanging of air fresheners from trees around the city to connote the vehicles environmentally friendly emissions.
Allegiant Air is allowing its planes to be wrapped with logos and commercial messaging. InterAir Media is behind the move.
Here's an ad from a tech retailer called TekServe that used $60,000 worth of iPods dominos-style to deliver its message.
Dieste Harmel & Partners has taken Gold at the 2006 FIAP show in Buenos Aires for an Anheuser-Busch spot titled "Mini Mouth."
For you art directors with some spare time on your hands, a site called TheBroth is a place where multiple players can move 1,000 colorful tiles to form collaborative mosaic artworks.
It's not exactly the most beautifully produced commercial, but this PSA advocates the hiring of those with disabilities and makes the argument that doing so is better for all involved.
Apparently, Subaru felt the need to respond to the VW My Fast ads.
It seems queers need financial advice too.
At ad:tech, ad serving company Atlas had a Truth Booth into which conference attendees would share their inner secrets which would be edited and emailed back to them. Wexley School for Girls created.
Here is a seriously whacked video promoting a cereal called Jelly Filled Frosted Sugar Balls. Actually, it's a twisted promotion for Mercury's twisted The Neverything.
We have no idea what this is. We're too lazy to find out. But, someone sent it to us so it must be something. Oh, it has something to do with advertising during the World Cup in Germany.
This thing promotes Sprite 3G...and a woman lays an egg. Don't ask, just watch.
This ad does a really nice job demonstrating the human touch Toyota imbues on its vehicles. A little too much human touch for us though.
Jeff Kling has a new book coming out. We think.
Ford' Your Ticket 2 Drive has Music 2 Drive 2. Good tunes.
Captains of Industry has created a podcast series for its client Arbor Networks that brings radio-style drama to the podcast. It's all about securing the net.
Even though we often rail against studies that simply restate the obvious, it's nice to see a study that confirms what we've known for years. Contrary to life as a porn star, in the world of media buying, size does not matter according to a recent study of negotiated media rates. A two year analysis of media spending by Billets media audit arm MMPA found prices paid for the same media vary widely and big agency bulk buying clout did not guarantee a lower rate. Our own personal confirmation of this came several years ago when an idiot sales rep mistakenly emailed us his entire inventory sheet for the past six month showing our little three person media department was kicking the shit out of the big guys rate-wise.
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Working with Saatchi & Saatchi, Toyota will sponsor a spin-off of the FOX series Prison Break called Prison Break: Proof of Innocence which will be broadcast to mobile phones and supported with ten seconf pre-roll ads. The mobile series itself will be promoted on the TV series with two minute spots airing in May as the first year of the show comes to a close. The effort is, of course, to reach the hard-to reach-younger demo and leverage the booming use of the cell phone as the central media device for consuming content.
The Wall Street Journal writes, "'Prison Break: Proof of Innocence' wasn't written by the same people who work on the regular series, and the mobisodes won't feature actors from the show, although the original producers have veto power over anything. The series introduces the character of Amber McCall and follows her path to exonerate her friend L.J., who has disappeared after being framed for murder. In the regular series, L.J. is the son of one of the lead characters. Amber will be played by actress Mandell Maughan; Fox says this is her first professional acting credit."
Perhaps finally acknowledging the pointlessness of printed (or even online) TV listing, TV Guide has jumped full force into blog land with the launch of 65 weblogs. The blogs, written by magazine and web editorial staff, focus on individual television shows, movies, soaps and just about everything else that has to do with television. This should stir things up among the already hundreds of TV focused blogs already in existence but, as many bloggers know, it's not seen as competition but rather more fuel to fire the conversation.
We were going to ignore this one because it's just so stupid but we keep seeing everyone talking about that Philips patent that would make it possible for broadcasters to somehow disable the ability of people to skip through commercials. However, we just can't leave it alone and we left a comment over at AdFreak which we'll share with you here.
"It's bad enough now that some DVDs force you to endure move previews...and that DVD manufacturers go along with the ploy. I have mixed feeling about where this will go. After all, if this thing actually took hold, people, as they use to do, would just get up during the commercial break and go to the kitchen or to the bathroom. And, to boot, since research is getting better at knowing when people actually see a commercial versus knowing it was simply broadcast to an empty room, marketers will bail out on this before it goes anywhere."
What do you think?
UPDATE: In an Advertising Age article today, Philips has clarified its patent claiming it meant to offer choice, not force viewership of ads, "We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads. It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services."
A recent Association of National Advertisers survey found 66 percent of advertisers involve themselves in some form of branded entertainment. Eighty percent use television as the channel through which to launch branded entertainment initiatives and 76 percent plan to include those initiative in their upfront dealings with broadcasters.
While marketers acknowledge impact on sales is of great importance and are measuring their efforts, 62 percent say it is not easy to do and 87 percent say existing measurement tools can't do the job. Sixty two percent say the money to fund branded entertainment initiatives comes from television budgets, up from 52 percent last year and more (35 percent) are funding initiatives incrementally, up from 18 percent last year. More than half (60 percent) do not rely on their agencies for branded entertainment and initiate projects themselves.
Shot atop a 54 story building in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, Dieste Harmel & Partners has created a CGI-filled spot for Gatorade that has a football team doing its thing while the voiceover intones, "When you give everything to win, you give life to the field." And, indeed, life is given. View the spot here.
Just as Howard Beale screamed in the 1976 movie, Network, so too are network execs, today, screaming "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore" in reaction to the FCC's piling on the final straw that broke the camel's back. After the FCC levied $3 million in fines last month for various indiscretions including a sexually charged Without A Trace scene, ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX have banded together to sue the FCC claiming, "The FCC rulings underscore the inherent problem of government involvement in deciding what viewers should and shouldn't see on television." Broadcasters claim those concerned about television content have plenty of means at their disposal to block content they individually deem inappropriate and the government need not involve itself as it does.
