- Last night Steve Hall hit Nokia Theater for Adobe's Battle of the Bands (photos here). Later he ran into Barbarian Group, which brought him a-frolicking to a hip hop club. Steve has all the fun.
- Guinness World Records taps greenfield media to manage its 3D book campaign. You'll need 3D specs to get the full experience from the ads, which run from Oct. 6 to Dec. 25 in the United Kingdom and United States.
- Blogging taxpayers aren't keen on this whole "Wall Street bailout" thing: "[We] have yet to see any online evidence of organic support for the Paulson proposal. Instead, what's going on may be the largest flowering of civic dissent since the antiwar protests of 2002-2003, but with a [bipartisan] twist." Our own online digging corroborates that (HuffPo! Michelle Malkin! YouTube junkies!), but Pew says 57 percent of the public favors the bailout. Confusing.
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If you're the low-brow cubicle perv we know you are, you probably already know about SFW Porn, where Paint-style animation camouflages visual vice.
Riffing off that style, Diesel promotes its 30th anniversary bash with "SFW XXX." That's not just a Roman numeral 30, it's a naughty '70s-style video that you can't quite be reprimanded for watching. (Bonus points if you tell onlookers this is an ad, which technically counts as research.)
See the pretty panda!
And if you're just that creepy, you might still get off, too. (Hope you haven't got your $30 Diesel skivvies on!)
Bravo to The Viral Factory. This idea -- or, well, appropriation -- may actually sell overpriced grass-stained denim, at least where one blogger's concerned.
Here's a :60 spot that'll flash you back to Schoolhouse Rock. It's called "A Little Change Will Do Us Good," released for Gulf Power by agency Luckie & Co. Animation by Z Animation/Dagnabit out of Atlanta. (Don't worry, there's nothing remotely Sheryl Crow-ish about it.)
The ad encourages citizens to save energy while demonstrating how Gulf Power is doing its part. Supporting efforts include print, outdoor and subsite ChangeWillDoUsGood.com, though that doesn't seem to be working right now. The ad campaign debuts Monday, so I'm positive the site'll be up by then.
Simple, G-rated, retro -- and consistent across media. Good stuff.
UPDATE: The folk at Luckie & Co. say the site will be up by tomorrow, fingers crossed.
In the realm of contextual fuckery, it's not always the advertisers that screw up. Sometimes it's the "legit" content providers themselves.
Case in point: on Monday morning, Culture Grrl woke up to find her copy of The New York Times wrapped in some kind of ad jacket for NBC-TV's new season.
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European mobile carrier Orange has this pay-as-you-go program that lets users define their own reward system. To promote it, Fallon/London tapped Reuben Sutherland of Joyrider, who came up with "Grabber."
In the spot above, transparent orange balloons, shaped like random animals, float enchantedly up toward the skylight of a factory building. (This setting was labeled "timeless," which I guess is true, given that we never quite run out of deserted warehouses.)
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Riffing off The Vagina Monologues, Philips launched the Bodygroom Manalogues, a web campaign where a chiseled, slightly scruffy guy performs inconsequential rants -- most related to body hair -- under poor light. Submit your own "manalogue" to see if it's worthy of web staging.
To curb any lingering speculation about what the campaign is for, a Philips razor hovers casually in the lower left-hand corner. Mousing over it makes the razor stand to attention -- decidedly phallic -- and freezes the video.
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- T-Mobile debuts first Google Android phone, thereby changing face of mobile forever, etc., etc.
- Wieden and Starbucks break up.
- Wrigley sells advergaming goldmine Candystand to Funtank. No word on why the service, which CEO James Baker of Funtank called "great viral marketing," was sold. Maybe it was just time to cash in.
- Biggie Smalls hits the big screen. "Too bad we're not in middle school anymore," says a twenty-something colleague. "I'm imagining the tears ... and the hugging."
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Here's an extended version of the American Express Travel ad that aired during the Emmy Pre-Show. In it, Martin Scorsese gives Tina Fey the hard sell on Boca Raton. It's the kind of thing we might characterize as funny, even if we didn't really watch it, just because it involves an awkward timeshare situation and Scorsese prattling -- almost, it seems, without end.
"There's a possibility of nine days -- not consecutive -- near the end of August, beginning of September." I like how he asks her to make the check out to "Cash."
By Ogilvy for American Express.
Take note, CP+B: In the realm of advertising, Scorsese's like the Seinfeld for a live-in-HD, less corny generation. His AmEx work aside, see what he did for Freixenet last year. (Seinfeld occasionally still does work for AmEx too, but it's all got a datedness to it.)
Hoping to target a multicolored crowd that's "losing touch with antiquated [...] ethnic messages," calling card company Rebtel partnered with Monsoon Media, creators of the decidedly-ethnic web comic strip Doubtsourcing.
At left is one component of what Monsoon came up with. Inspired by old-school Bollywood print ads, it features Rebtel CEO Hjalmar Winbladh surrounded by multi-ethnic folk on cell phones. And an Asian dude with a gun. (A more direct and permanent form of communication, I guess.)
"Great service, dazzling features and super cheap rates! Rebtel CEO Hjalmar Winbladh is looking to dishoom ripoff calling plans!" the ad beams brightly.
At first I thought I read that wrong, but the pressie says "dishoom" is the sound a Bollywood hero makes when punching a bad guy. Well then, all right.
Future iterations of the campaign include a web component, some sort of tongue twister, and a third ad where a forlorn mother guilt-trips viewers into calling neglected relatives.
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