Tequila has put together an interesting holiday card that scrolls horizontally and shows off the agency at it's holiday party. Well, a staged holiday party and a holiday party rife with product placement. From Nissan to the Energizer Bunny to Pepsi One, products intermingle with agency employees as they get festive. One might assume there be at least one time during the year, we advertising folk could be without our brands but no, the rule our lives whether we like it or not.
Well Ant Farm Interactive co-opted It's A Wonderful Life for its Christmas card so it is without surprise we received another co-opted card. This time it's from Grey San Francisco and it features actual footage from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer but with a voice over that talks about how Christmas could really use an ad campaign. Hmm... not a bad idea with all the politically correct fame Happy Chrismukawanza is getting these days. Perhaps the lowly Christmas holiday could use a little marketing juice.
Before we all spend next week huddled in front of the fire watching It's a Wonderful Life on our iPods, check out this Holiday card from Ant Farm Interactive called It's A Wonderful Internet. Just as in the movie, it envisions life without something. In this case, the Internet. In fairy tale style, it takes us through the life of "George" as he experiences life without the Internet.
Hoping to set the record straight and give credit where credit is due, branded entertainment agency Campfire would like us all to know they, working with McKinney, conceived and executed Audi's "Art of the Heist" campaign which Creativity magazine has just named 2005 campaign of the year.
As opinionites bicker over whether the holidays are about Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanuka or unadulterated commercialism, agency The Brooklyn Brothers bypasses all that buffoonery and offers recipients of its holiday card a different set of choices. Rather than bitch about which religion is more important, people can bitch about which platform through which they'd like to receive their card. Choices range from email to snail mail to fax to download to e-card to :30 to webcast. Make your selection and stop your bitchin'.
Taunting those who have a politically correct stick up their ass, NightAgency has offered the industry a Christmas card we, well at least Christmas lovers, can all take joy in as the card skewers every group out there calling attention to the notion Christmas isn't for everyone. Before the Comment section explodes, remember, it's called satire.
Just when we were having fun celebrating the holidays with agency Christmas cards, gleefully reveling in their witty cuteisms, we had to receive this disaster from Wunderman. When receiving and viewing holiday wishes, it shouldn't be a chore, a job, an effort that requires anything more than a chuckle and a smirk. But that's exactly what Wunderman did with their holiday card. They created work and frustration. First, the Flashturbation took forever to load. Second...get this....you have to enter your email address just to view the thing! Come on. A holiday card should be a warm and friendly greeting, not a hard "we want your contact info" new business tactic. Not only do you have to enter your email, you have to eneter it every friggin time you visit the site! Has Wunderman never heard of a cookie?
We're not done yet. After getting through the card's unnecessary gateway, you'd think you'd be ready for a warm holiday welcome. No. It's friggin game. You have to choose a character, give it a nickname and then screw around with keys on your keyboard to make your character skate. And that's not all. There's a chat feature where, apparently, you can chat with...um...yourself. This card is so bad we have to invent a Worst Agency Holiday Card Award just for Wunderman. Congrats, Wunderman. Stick this on your trophy wall.
Clearly illustrating the humorous obsessiveness of your average ad agency and why most ad campaign fail due to analysis paralysis, New York agency AKQA struggles valiantly to create its Holiday card while, predictably, every person in the agency offers their insight and suggestions to a very frustrated Executive Creative Director.
Oh God. This brings back absolutely horrific memories of our time spent pontificating, kissing ass, interacting with idiots, trying to explain to primadonnas their ideas suck and generally snickering at the entire agency business model. That said, we miss it dearly which is why we like this "making of a Christmas card" video from communications agency Closerlook. If your jonesing for some hipster agency experience, wallow in the schadenfreude this merry wish provides.
Seattle-based agency Sedgwick Rd. crafted a unique Christmas campaign which pushes aside all that religious and politically correct crap in favor of the true meaning of Christmas: buying stuff. The agency highlights this campaign in its video Christmas card that outlines the agency's research and creative strategy in developing its "no room for anti-Christmas factions full of freaks with nothing to do other than attack America's favorite pass time - emptying Wal-mart warehouses full of crap no one really needs or wants which ultimately ends up clogging overflowing landfills" campaign. Oops, that was a little harsh. We jest.
