Call him the industry's John Tucker. Apparently Jim Haven, the owner of Creature Seattle, generates strong feelings of love and (predominant) hate in the ad world - for his passable ad work, affinity for young ad foxes, and prima donna attitude.
He's even sparked an "I Hate Jim Haven" MySpace Group, which is more than what we can say about most ad execs we can tick off on our fingers and toes.
We can't claim to have strong feelings for Jim Haven in either direction, try though some might to generate some, mainly because all we've ever deigned to cover of his work was this Big Love campaign. We also can't claim that his agency, which swears it's "reinterpreting advertising," is saying anything more arrogant than any other agency.
In an industry where everybody thinks everybody else is a douchebag, you can't just pin down one clown and call him court jester.
Do we think Haven's sort of an arrogant prick? Maybe. But do we hate Haven? No. We couldn't happily give 1/100th of a damn.
After All You Need is Luvs, we can't say we're crazy about anything Saatchi at the moment.
But having seen this conspicuously similar pair of ads by MFI and IKEA, the Ad Police - an incognito force - did some following-up and found another pair of matched ads from the same two campaigns.
See IKEA's fighting couple, 2002, Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.
See MFI's fighting couple, 2007, M&C Saatchi.
Way to leave your lovemarks, guys.
It's a rare thing when marketers get pissed-off about the appropriation of meaningful symbols to sell stuff. Isn't that, like, what we do?
But the Beatles and the Vietnam war (particularly in the context of our current overseas "disagreement") are somewhat sensitive topics. So if you're going to use "All You Need is Love" to push diapers, expect to be swathed in shit.
See the first spot for All You Need is Luvs. We have to admit it's sort of cute.
In defense of its use of the Vietnam-inspired tune for a Luvs Deluxe campaign, Mark Rolland of Saatchi & Saatchi said, "The song itself was chosen to help create a stronger connection to the Luvs brand and awareness of its core benefit--leakage protection for less."
Stick to ripping IKEA ads, man.
AdPulp's David Burn points to anonymous ad blog Agency Tart on which the writer castrates his (or her) client for telling him permission should have been requested when he told the client Monday he'd be out of the office this Wednesday through Monday...but fully available via Blackberry. We all know some clients like to keep their agency folk on a tight leash but after laughing at the client thinking the whole thing was a joke, Agency Tart minced no words over being treated like a kid and wrote, "[the client] proceeded to tell me that he expects me to clear it in advance with him any time I plan to take off, as it might not 'coincide with the company's needs.' You gotta be kidding me. While I'm gone, I'll scour the souvenir shops looking for a device that will help him get his head out of his ass."
Clearing your vacation with your immediate supervisor, yes. Sharing your vacation plans with your client, yes. Being required to ask your client if you can take time off like a second grader asking his teacher to go to the bathroom...um, not so much.
Somehow we thought that, with all the godforsaken noise that deluged us upon arriving at the Garfield Group careers site, the associated video would be all the more raucous and daring.
We're really touched by the notion that everyone eats lunch together and that somebody was clever enough to push product into the hands of enthused interns, but it's just ... flat. And the use of vernacular like "for jobs that totally rock" only served to accentuate the candle-in-the-sun effect.
And as Jay-Z so blithely said, "That shit don't even out."
Like hidden dirty images in family-friendly Disney posters, easter eggs have always been a favorite of designers the world over to express, perhaps a twisted sense of humor or, simply, to just have fun. Now, apparently, Hide This Thing wants to create a community around the practice and even create a common visual easter egg language of sorts. Like a digital flash mob, Hide This Thing hopes to create mass appearances of various objects inside TV commercials, print ads, websites and anything else a creative lays his hands on.
We do wonder though if "making official" easter eggs doesn't detract from exactly what they are supposed to be: crazy one-offs that express something the individual was feeling at the moment of creation. You decide.
- Reader's Digest has just announced it will now accept ads on its back cover in January...and cut circulation by 20 percent. Hmm. Guess things aren't going so well.
- Any iPhone spoof that has the copy, "I'm drunk as fuck and I'm driving down the Interstate" is good in our book.
- Uppity blogoshereites aren't taking kindly to McDonald's latest blogging efforts in which the junk food giant has enlisted six "mommy bloggers" to tout the wonders of carrying Big Mac in one hand and a screaming two year old in the other.
- As if teachers haven't yet been disrespected enough, The Learning Annex educational institute has offered Paris Hilton $1 million to teach budding entrepreneurs her secrets behind branding.
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While there haven't been any of the usual booth babes here at ad:tech Miami, which, some would say is a good thing, we were pleased to run into a fully-dressed team from No More Landing Pages, the group that protested outside the last ad:tech in San Francisco to advance their cause of "increasing online conversions and ROI." Oh, and its also a front for the agency that actually does the work that increases the efficiency of pages: Ion Interactive. Oh, and it's also an Adrants advertiser for all you full disclosure lovers.
For it's fourth outing, Arnold's Cannes't team found Ogilvey's Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin who spoke about their work on Grand Prix contender Dove Evolution and how it has affected their work for other clients. In a nutshell, many clients eye's were opened by the work and have become more willing to explore similar, non-traditional approaches to their advertising.
Also explored in the video is Cannes night life. mostly a montage of joyful advertising bodies happy to be away from the office for a week, the segment does a nice job encapsulating the non-awards portion of Cannes. We still don't know about the tattoo or where Meredeth went.
Alas, it was R/GA's Nike + iPod which won the coveted Cyber Lion.
- All those predictions about the death of the upfront? Still wrong. It's looking healthy and on it's way to 9 billion, up three percent from last year. Death of the :30? not this year.
- PricewaterhouseCooper says global web ad spending will hit $80 billion by 2011.
- Even more Cannes idiocy: Wrath of Cannes
- Howard Stern may be sued by weight loss company JEC for disparaging comments he made about Stern regular, Cabbie who is using the product.
- Johnson & Johnson has pulled creative duties for all but one account, Acuvue, from IPG's McCann Erikson, a loss of $90 million for the agency.
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