- Tom Messner on web two-dot-oh: "TV was still social medium in 1965 as people gathered around it; nobody gathers around the Internet unless you think that everyone is gathering around it at any time." Read more up-close with Hustle Knockin'. (V-via.)
- Twitter waves $500 million in Facebook stock off the table.
- Montreal-based Sid Lee opens doors where we all wish we could: in Amsterdam!
- "Oh, haven't you heard of Glah-day?" Someone finally speaks out about those Godforsaken Glade Scented Candles ads.
- George Parker will host your Second Life wedding if you promise to pass him some dirt on Enfatico.
- Google lets you customize search results.
- Planning to die? Don't forget to switch on the webcam.
- Shepard Fairey discusses his work and his design agency, Studio Number One, in a video interview.
The holidays -- shopping, senile relatives, stuffing with raisins and endless variations on the nativity -- aren't for everyone. This Leo Burnett ad for McDonald's depicts just such a guy.
The scene: charades by the Christmas tree with extended family. After an over-obvious movie mime (chest-pounding, monkey noises) that wins him "Brokeback Mountain...?", he acts out the first two words of The Great Escape, then leaps into a secret tunnel that looks like it's been dug with gravy spoons. Off to McD's he goes.
The UK-based ad promotes McDonald's "festive menu," which launches Wednesday. A spokesperson told the Guardian it's "strictly a turkey-free zone" to give customers "a haven to escape from some of the stressful Christmas activities, like shopping."
Guess that makes sense. Nothing soothes the consumption-distressed soul like chicken ... McNuggets.
Dear Bank of America and Microsoft,
Your recent upgrade to the new state of the art ATMs which, among other things, can accept check and cash deposits without an envelope has been, shall we say, less than pleasant. Apart from all the disconcerting noises and beeps they make, did you really have to assign the Windows XP Ding sound to the machines which plays every time a button on the touchscreen is pushed? Hello?? That's the same sound everyone in the world hears when they mis-click or make an error on their PC.
Don't you think choosing that sound to represent common function on the ATM was, well, pretty stupid? Not to mention incredibly disconcerting to the person using the ATM? Do you really want everyone to think they are making an error every time they push a button? Was this some sick joke your programmers decided to play on the unsuspecting public? Would it really have been that difficult to have pick something else from the hundreds of other less disconcerting system sound God forbid, create a new one?
The last thing I want to feel when I'm using an ATM is that I'm making a mistake or, worse, it's making a mistake. Which brings me to my next topic...
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Or your aquarium, as the case may be. And while those winning numbers fall out of the sky, why not stick the dinette set under them? Fickle Fortune will buy you a new one. Someday.
By Colle+McVoy for the Minnesota State Lottery. The latter hosts a Daily Drawing show every night, which C+M helped reformat: instead of floating ping pong balls with lotto numbers, "viewers now get plummeting cast iron balls."
Who signed off on that idea?
Anyway, the spots linked above are two of 50 (probably equally disjointed) ads shot for the accompanying campaign. So if you're Minne-soootan, expect to see plenty of variants through '09. (Sorry.)
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Which makes the reward potential about as exciting as "winning" a class action lawsuit.
This outdoor campaign for ABSOLUT vodka is running in New York and LA. As always, the idea is to tout the superiority of a world where ABSOLUT is boss. Case in point: getting tomorrow's lotto numbers instead of yesterday's.
Yeah, that would be cool. If you were, like, the only person awake in Times Square that morning.
Creative by TBWA\Chiat\Day out of NYC.
The economy shake-up means hard times for everybody, but print news weeklies are probably among the heaviest-laden. Few people are willing to wait a day to see news in print; fewer still have the patience for a week, not when they can load Google News and have at it instantaneously.
In a desperate bid at self-preservation, the LA Weekly has launched "LONG LIVE PRINT." Weeklyites invaded the Detour Festival in Downtown LA to wave signs, distribute bookmarks (cringe) and ink the message onto other people's shirts with a printing press (nifty!).
Other media ran on newsstands and in the LA Weekly itself. See the creative in all its grungy glory:
Cool work by Ignited LA. Painfully valiant though, given that we've never thought much about the LA Weekly, and now we associate it with the struggle of by-weeklies to remain relevant in an increasingly by-the-Tweet kind of world.
You know, like a candy cane, except with peeled-off bits of other people's faces.
To promote Give Me More Stripes, some kind of VIP dining rewards card, TGI Friday's launched the farcically kitschy Give Me More Stripes face striping widget.
Those reined into the Give Me More Stripes club get a coupon for a free appetizer, a one-time "front of the line" pass -- which could come in handy if you're ever insanely feening for jalapeno poppers -- and the ability to earn "stripes" for every dollar spent.
...Are those anything like big-top points?
Provided with little more than an audio file of the Lexus IS F on the go, production company Crush was asked to visualize what the sound would look like. This is the result of that.
Pretty, and effective in its lack of language. I especially like the smoke circles. Last few scenes cut briefly to the car, the logo, the slogan: "The pursuit of perfection." Clean.
And infinitely more coherent than "F is everything you thought we weren't."
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Staples is running a campaign called Gift it for Free, where 10,000 people could "win" any purchase they make at the store between November 16 and December 24.
To promote an already-feeble promotional effort, the marketing team invented a fictional character called Coach Tom, who from what I can tell just wanders around dispensing advice on winning to people that aren't interested, like Tai Chi practitioners and the Kings. At some point in his didactic prattling, he'll toss in a ramble about Gift it for Free, which doesn't visibly spark any interest in his existence.
Feels forced and campy. Also, the videos are too long. But whatev, see requisite YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages. (Remember how everyone used to build a MySpace page too, and now nobody bothers? Sign of the changing times.)
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From now through December, expect to see Lara Croft decimating your favourite gamer sites, starting with this one. (Pull the ring in the leaderboard to get her going.)
Once all that pesky content's out of the way, indulge in a big-ass HD ad for Tomb Raider: Underworld, plus free downloadable demo. By Eyeblaster, IGN and SF-based agency JVST.
Playful immersive ad experiences like this are very cool. We saw something similar last September for Wario Land: Shake It! on YouTube. As the video progressed, Wario's kicks, bumps and big fat jiggles utterly "destroyed" the profile page.
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