With help from production firm Dictionary Films, Leo Burnett launched a TV spot for "Food Shouldn't Be a Luxury," an effort to encourage locals to donate supplies to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
The ad's put together like a generic perfume ad, with occasional flashes of a boiling pot and some random pasta fondling. We seriously winced when the model sexily purred "Spaghetti" in her fake Kate Moss-for-Eternity voice, but it got the point across: Okay, okay! Food shouldn't be a luxury.
Make a donation or volunteer time at Every1Can.org. Unlike the prints (see first link), the spot doesn't invite users to text donations over. Not sure if that means the texting thing didn't pan out, or if Leo Burnett just doesn't think people keep phones nearby while watching TV.
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- URLesque has compiled a list of the top ten spec ads of 2008. Our fave, the JCPenney Speed Dressing ad is on the list.
- Just once I'd like to be able to tell someone like her to put her laptop on vibrate and stick it where the sun don't shine."
- Fuel Industries' Sean McPhedran tells us, "Rather than the cute holiday mini-game I think everyone would expect, we gathered around the sound studio and put together an old fashioned radio play this year, complete with bad acting!"
- Zugara sends us all over YouTube with a Santa-themed annotation adventure.
- New York Festivals has announced it 2008 Global Awards.
Under the slogan "Your holiday spirit," Lamb's pushes a triage of billboards that speak directly to scruffy dudes exhausted by the spendy and energetic gyrations of others.
Each board appears to be wood-paneled and (festively?) duct-taped. Perched by a swig-worthy neck of Lamb's are the following messages:
o "Yeah, we're into free-range turkey. It's called hunting."
o "You can buy a $75 tree. Or a $10 axe." (At left.)
o "Holiday shopping should be a one-day event."
Amusing work, even if it speaks to the parts of men that have attempted to fix our cars, build us coffee tables and otherwise sprinkle havoc (and sawdust, and transmission fluid) on our tidy store-bought worlds. Given the lines we're all having to brave just to visit the bank or buy groceries, the ads'll probably draw more lips to the bottle than those of the target market. (Frankly, we're halfway there.)
The work builds on Lamb's "It beats fancy" campaign, orchestrated by John St.
- Top 10 virals of '08, courtesy of the guys that brought you this.
- Digitas Health donates to charity for the holidays, as does RAZ PR (which told us via paper card). Meanwhile, comScore pledges trees.
- "Unprecedented economic waters" (nice euphemism!) means no FedEx retardation during '09's Super Bowl. One less thing to look forward to. Honestly, anything involving Burt Reynolds makes us happier people.
- Remember that crazy/beautiful, semi-schizophrenic media orgy titled Game, Game, Game and Again Game? The sequel is called I Made This. You Play This. We Are Enemies. Creator Jason Nelson promises "More strange hand drawn creatures, with screen shot anchored levels and all the poetic bits known." And then we kissed him.
- Crowdsourcing horror.
- Beancasting Steve and Bill. Among other things, they talk online video marketing, Pepsi suicide ads and diversity (lack of?) in the industry.
- Learn to shred with CP+B. "But yeah, the biggest thing people will go after is Alex giving lessons on how to play Extreme's More Than Words." Sounds like a winner to me.
As many wait around for what' become an interminably long time for Twitter to come up with (or at least adopt one of the thousands of ideas suggested) a revenue model, Dell, and several others, have come up with their own method of extracting money from Tweets. AdPulp points to an article on internetnews.com which reports Dell, over the past year and a half, has seen $1 million in revenue directly from its presence on Twitter.
Dell has no less than thirty task-specific accounts on Twitter but the one that returned that million dollars was its Dell Outlet account which hypes discounts available at the company's Home Outlet Store.
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Crispin's global conquest project for Burger King, where it scours the world in pursuit of "Whopper Virgins," is in full swing. Idle TV-trawling exposed us to taste test teasers in both Thai and Transylvanian villages.
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Oh screw it. There's no real news this week anyway (other than DDB making the dramatic discovery a work week is 40 hours) so here's yet another holiday card. As with most work in this industry, it's not original. But that doesn't necessarily make it bad. Or good. In this case, we can't decide.
First Round Capital put together a video that highlights all the companies it works with. Sounds boring? Sure. But, if you've ever seen the Matt Harding's Where the Hell is Matt dancing videos, you'll recognize this one immediately.
As to whether or not it's good, one could argue the former because, well, getting supposedly serious business people to do a stupid dance is funny. One could also argue the latter in that the unofficial idea behind the Matt Harding videos - that a simple dance can bring the world's people together in peace - is tastelessly trashed here by a company whose sole purpose is to give cash to companies so they can make even more cash.
You decide.
This holiday season, Alltel reprises last year's concept -- vintage animation -- to push the superiority of its My Circle unlimited free calling plan. The ad features the carrier's Nick Nayloresque mascot Chad, yukking it up with Santa about how some people just don't get the meaning of Christmas.
And like last year, Alltel's effort falls in the shadow of Apple, which also pinned the old hero vs. villain dirge to an animated backdrop. Unlike the chill scruffy Mac, however, the guffawing greased-up Chad rings a lot less likable.
Production work by Bent Image Lab, agency Santo.
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In yet another TD Bank ad featuring Regis and Kelly, Abraham Lincoln shares his (angsty, angsty!) feelings about being the face of the mostly-worthless penny.
Kelly -- who lacks the social delicacies to perceive this might be a dangerous topic -- seizes this opportunity to tell the audience that TD Bank loves pennies so much, "they'll count them and convert them to dollars for free."
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Uh Oh. Once again, a less than clued in marketer has rankled sensibilities by using tired stereotypes to promote product. A new site from ConAgra has been created for the brand's Asian Inspired Health Choice. It's lame. Truly lame. But we're going to give the floor to our reader who had this to say about that:
"Where do I begin? The ad people who came up with the 'lonely fortune writer' idea should be fired. The brand manager that approved the concept and execution should be fired. Anyone who approved this work should re-evaluate their values.
Not only is the work insulting to Chinese/Asians and Chinese/Asian Americans (what with the awful accent, broken English, and idiot like antics), but it also completely degrades the brand and product.
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