In the first ad released by Crispin Porter+Bogusky for Microsoft, Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld meet serendipitously at Shoe Circus, a Payless ShoeSource-type store. Seinfeld helps him pick out shoes. Made of pleather. Significant glances are exchanged, immigrants gawk, and churros are shared.
Thus ingratiated with one of the world's richest (and thriftiest?) men, Seinfeld poses the question we'd all ask, given the chance (and a serious case of munchies): "Are they ever gonna come up with something that'll make our computers moist and chewy like cake so we can eat 'em while we're working?"
Gates gives Seinfeld a subtle but sassy little ass-shake to denote "yes."
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"What does it mean to be interesting? That's an interesting question." It's also one of the better lines from "Behind Interesting," a six-part web series by Dos Equis and Break, which is letting Dos Equis ride its leaderboards like a carnival pony.
"Behind Interesting" expands on Dos Equis' Most Interesting Man in the World campaign. Problem is, all that over-practiced pompousness is just too earnest to be ironic.
- Want to amuse yourself for a few minutes with a stupid wrestling game? Head over to Anger Angle and beat the crap out of TNA wrestler Kurt Angle.
- Platform-A just launched an ad optimization system for the iPhone which "detects and delivers optimized ads on iPhones browsing the Web."
- George Parker lambastes the "first" Dell ad from Enfatico, writing, "A standard boiler-plate shot of a hard nosed bitch standing in cubicle hell with her Dell laptop clasped to her ample breast demanding protection for her 'data!'"
- Hints of blowjobs don't go over well with the MPAA which didn't take kindly to the poster for the Kevin Smith film Zack and Miri Make A Porno.
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What's an Olympics win without a few marketing deals following the win? Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Nastia Liukin won't know because she's already gearing up for a laundry list of spokesperson gigs. She'll front Cover Girl ads, launch a line of jeans with Vanilla Star, appear on the Wheaties box and appear on Gossip Girl. Oh and she already has a deal with tween website Beaconstreetgorls.com.
Liukin has a positive outlook, saying, "Winning the Olympics can change your life, and nothing can prepare you for that. You can go with the flow and enjoy the ride." A native of Plano Texas, Liukin was born in Moscow and moved to America with her parents, who competed in the Olympics for the former Soviet Union, when she was two and a half.
More marketing deals are likely to follow and she'll be hanging with Maria Sharapova during fashion week in New York at Peter Som's show.
Writing on AdPulp and in his TalentZoo column, Dan Goldeier makes, correctly, the argument most campaigns are no longer given the time they need to build momentum and to enter the psyche of the consumer long enough to mean anything. He asks the question, "are ad campaigns given enough time to work these days?"
The answer is a resounding no and that, shortsightedly, been the case for a very long time. No one wants to, or is afraid to, invest the long periods of time it takes for a campaign to truly build. Everyone in marketing is too fickle and they are more concerned with advancing their own careers than advancing the success of the brands on which they work.
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- Blogger Meggie Poo unsubscribes to a random retail e-newsletter ... and its CAPTCHA calls her a whore. O_o
- Some members of the maverick Mad Men twitterati are affiliated with We Are Sterling Cooper, which "[catalogues] the conversation around AMC's Mad Men and its fanbase across the social web." Thanks @AmandaMooney.
- Speaking of fake Twitter characters, meet @S.A.R.A.H., an artificially intelligent house from the Sci Fi Channel's Eureka. Created by Fallon.
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Jamba Juice makes its foray into the grocery aisle with a celebratory ad by Publicis/NY and production firm Stardust. In "Fruit Pixels," a bouquet of berries spring out of a Jamba smoothie bottle and shape-shift into a swinging schoolgirl, a swimmer, a volleyball player and the Jamba Juice logo before slipping back into the bottle, now neatly capped.
Tagline: "Live fruitfully." Hrrrm. The Ting Tings, which sing Fruit Machine in the background, could've given you guys somethin' better than that.
Off-topic, I love how personified energy can be used to promote both hip surgery and fruity beverages.
Sike friends into thinking you have a Porsche. Upload a shot of your driveway on the Porsche -- I Can subsite, choose from one of four platinum-coloured models, then PhotoShop your heart out with a limited set of image adjustment tools.
The result is an almost-perfect, semi-nifty shot of a Porsche in your driveway. (Unless, like me, you Googled up a dream driveway too.) Save as wallpaper or share with friends. Just don't invite them over.
Impressed? Yeah? ...No? Well, the effort earned Cramer Krasselt/Chicago some LA Times love.
This year at the Olympics, performance-enhancing athletic gear were all the rage. Four years from now, will it be highly-advanced hips and knees?
"Smith & Nephew introduces the next generation of joint replacements: highly-advanced hips and knees engineered to meet the needs of your high-performance life."
The ad, designed to make active human beings look like fluid ribbons of energy, was produced by Psyop for Ogilvy/NY. I like how it breathes life into an industry normally associated with near-immobile geriatrics ("I've fallen and I can't get up!"). But It also brought Touch of Gray to mind. Sexy grays, bionic hip surgery: looks like advertising's in midlife-crisis mode.
Sadly, there have been a few too many examples of brands co-opting the work of others for their own financial gain. Here's another. In December 2006, Scott Ableman and his co-workers decided to play a practical joke on another co-worker who drove a Jaguar and was one of those people who would park his car in a very remote spot so as to avoid scratches and dings. Ableman and friends plastered the co-worker's car with Post-It notes, took pictures of the resulting colorful design and posted them on Flickr. The whole thing turned into somewhat of a viral sensation.
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