Kia's takes its Soul to the streets with help from UK-based CURB, a company whose modus operandi it is to develop nothing but eco-friendly ads.
Dirty pavements in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham will be "spray-cleaned" with the silhouette of a Soul and a link to shapeyoursoul.com, where you can win a soul of your own. (We're trying not to read too deeply into this, especially since we like kicking puppies, carving random initials into young trees and vandalizing any and all likenesses of Regis Philbin.)
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Every once in awhile you come across some viral propaganda that's actually pretty neat, actually. (Consider.)
Hoping to reignite the sleeping flames of The Watchmen comic series fans, Rubber Republic launched a YouTube channel to populate with retro news stories.
Commentary's mostly favourable and views are high: all signs of happy viral life. People seem impatient for more news stories to appear as the public release of The Watchmen draws near. (In theatres March 6, boys and girls.)
We're suckers for an elaborate backstory, so this is some pretty cool shit. Hopefully the film will maintain the same fidelity to the spirit of the original comics.
Find more goodies -- including a retro game, widgets and all the necessary social network tie-ins -- at thenewfrontiersman.net. One of the videos has also been posted below.
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On Friday the 13th, Warner Brothers corralled a bunch of black cats together, covered them in Fear 2 swag and let them loose in London.
The object was to catch the attention of superstitious pedestrians as they avoid sidewalk cracks and ladders and whatnot.
Nice way to get attention. From your target demo though? Ehhh.
Off-topic, is it possible to train a cat to walk in a leash? Huh. Guess so.
Boy do we have a spot for you. Nescafe's "More Beans, More Taste" features "over one tonne of beans," shooting into the air a la the Bellagio Fountains, to the tune of "Che interminabile audirivieni" from comic opera Don Pasquale.
The weird thing is, for something with all that going on, it just kinda falls flat. Maybe it's because watching dancing water isn't that fun in the first place, and is really only marginally so in person. Or maybe it's because it's Nescafe.
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Some people love Valentine's Day. Some people hate it. Some brands pay hipster musicians to make Valentine's Day messages that riff off their billboard campaign. Others don't. Which category Pepsi falls into is unknown but, hey, does it really matter?
For those who love Valentine's Day? Happy Valentine's Day. Knock yourself out.
For those that don't, there's always Hotel for Dogs...or the dump.
Colorado's FirstBank hopes to nail younger customers by pushing its mobile banking product.
"Its simple goal is to demonstrate a commitment to the youth market, by going to them where they are," the pressie explained. But we suspect the choice of media buy -- just Colorado ski resorts -- had as much to do with TDA Advertising's one-hit wonder of a slogan as the demo did.
"Bank in your ski mask without getting arrested," the ads deadpan. Yeah, that's not gonna work in a shopping mall.
Not completely sure what to make of this one. For pizza franchise Mr. Jim's, AdWise put together this weird ad where founder Mr. Jim goes head-to-head with "Doughby," his dough-making robot.
In the space of :30 they start randomly arguing about whether it's dough, or "the toppings and the crust!", that makes a pizza great.
But given that crust is composed of dough, and the company slogan is "It's the crust!", I guess Doughby wins. Or both win. Or maybe it doesn't matter, and we should all hit Pizza Hut for some stuffed-crust action, because that's really more our speed.
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Joining the distinguished ranks of Dame Edna and Fergie, Hello Kitty is lending her likeness to MAC cosmetics.
"We are thrilled to partner with a brand that shares the vision of offering an innovative, authentic and transforming experience to our loyal fan base," said Janet Hsu, who said some similarly frothy thing when Sanrio announced its partnership with McDonald's earlier this month.
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Visit the deliciously dollhousey Coraline website. Enter the house, then click on the picture frame if you want to stitch buttons onto your face. Plenty to choose from, and each set of buttons is coupled with curiously thought-out descriptions. (That's the appeal of Coraline's marketing strategy: in keeping with the handmade motif, everything feels tailored to you, even things that obviously aren't.)
Once done tweaking and zooming your button eyes, download and save; embeds are available for MySpace and Facebook.
We also came across this Coraline Nike Dunks Giveaway offer. Okay, that's some pretty deep product whoring, but oh! we want them, just to have them, just because everything Coraline reeks of tasty dark girlwitch magic.
Guerrilla Comm and Silicon Alley Insider scooped us on this Onion spoof on Sony: its complex, overambitious product line, and utopic rape-your-eyeballs ad strategy.
Imagine all that in a news brief coloured by the profane angst-rage you suffer once you finally get that "motherfucking time vampire"* home. (Oh yeah, language NSFW.)
"Maybe the Onion was inspired by 'BD-Live,' the confusing and ill-advised plan to integrate Blu-ray disc watching with instant messaging," said Alley Insider. And the sad part is, that crazy POS was real.
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