Imagine if the Coke Happiness Factory got hijacked by dancing Reds that prefer fruity vodka to sugar water. You're probably picturing "Airship," the latest spot for Stoli Blakberi, put together by Publicis/London and production company Stink/Psyop. Music by Prokofiev.
Part of what keeps me drinking Stoli is unwavering affection for its advertising. On TV or in print, it's always got the same feel: over-the-top, cartoony, propagandistic. Disney's "It's a Small World After All" meets the hoarse ballads and frosty grit of Moscow.
Stoli is a proud, heavy-handed romantic, and taking a swig is like surrendering to history: the beautifying dizziness, concrete on your lips, bile in your throat. It's a suffering, and a brand, baptized in nostalgia.
The other day I was complaining -- or was it more like bitching? -- about how all car ads seem pretty much the same. (If not "the same," then "zealously derivative.") Then Organic busts out with this really weird ad for the Chrysler Town & Country.
It's all words. The narrator's telling this bizarre story, then the words appear in front of you, so you get this tiring but riveting experience of seeing and hearing crunchy nouns like "pocket pony" and "crabapples" at the same time. (Don't ask, just watch.)
more »
Here's that Chevy Traverse ad that keeps playing during the Olympics. I sat through it twice yesterday and didn't really get the correlation between Shirtless Man Lovingly Laundering and Chevy Traverse with Folding Seats.
Twitter's not keen on it either.
Fortunately, there's YouTube. Scroll down to the comments. Past all the complaining about double standards and whatnot, someone explains that both the man and the Traverse are "beautiful, useful, and everything you ever wanted ... and them [sic] some."
Ohhhhh. Suddenly the tagline makes sense.
OMFG! Can you believe it! Is it really possible? Could this really be happening? Could we really be getting this excited and worked up over an agency spoof site and the realization it was created by an ad blogger? Apparently so, given the endless press Adomatica's Robert Gilbreath, creator of Enfartico (now defunct), received following the launch and "leaking" of his Enfatico spoof site.
AgencySpy has full on, breathless coverage in lengthy detail for those who want to wallow in the juicydetails of a fake agency website that's managed to garner almost as much press as the agency itself. That said, it's sad Enfatico couldn't just go along with the joke. It's sad they just officiously shut the site down. It's sad they didn't launch their own CGM/UGC/Web 2.0 response. It could have been fun. Oh well. In this instance, the party line was followed to the letter. No company wants it's brand toyed with but Enfartico was hardly doing harm to Enfatico.
more »
For client Little Debbie, Marcos Ambrose joins forces with a talking koala. They're so cute together, it's oddly gratifying to see them draw housewives' attention at the supermarket or co-pilot a race while koala eats Zebra Cakes.
"I thought you only ate eucalyptus leaves?" Ambrose demands, slightly miffed, right before he peels out onto the track.
Collective awwwwwwwww. Don't you just want to rub their tummies and feed them a Devil Square?
The spots went live in tandem with racing season. So far Ambrose isn't doing too terribly, no thanks to his choice of snack food, but a talking marsupial riding shotgun (think of the crumbs!) probably keeps things interesting.
See more of their routine on Little Debbie's Miles of Smiles website, put together by Luckie & Co., which also did the creative.
So I woke up this morning and heard on the radio that John McCain's getting sued for using Running on Empty, a song by Jackson Browne, in one of his anti-Obama ads without permission. That McCain, what a maverick.
I doubt he's losing sleep over it though, because another artist, John Rich, actually digs McCain enough to give him his own song. It's called Raisin' McCain, and while it bears a slight satirical resemblance to Raining McCain in name and subject matter, Rich's effort is actually not a joke.
That's some catchy shit right thar. And is it just me, or do sequins give our star-spangled banner a little more oomph?
- Diggin' these Beijing Olympics-based efforts for Mini Cooper and Samsung. Well, the Samsung one might have confused me if I saw it in person, but the Mini rickshaw thing is pretty dope.
- Should Starbucks engage in latte art? American coffee snobs, a subculture Starbucks helped create, would probably argue yes -- if it's at all serious about maintaining luxury cachet. (Which I increasingly doubt it is.)
- More Michael Phelps ads by Visa. PS -- Phelps scored a perfect eight gold medals in the Olympics this summer. It's so exciting, I'm starting to get spam about it.
- So I guess Verizon is not that into disco.
- Rainbow tribe daddy Brad Pitt is launching a body wash in partnership with Kiehl's. The product will cost $16.50 market, he'll appear in no ads, and 100 percent of profits will go to JPF Eco Systems, a green charity he and Kiehl's started together. How sweeeeet.
Tailor a piece of Americana to your global village!
Coca-Cola's chosen ATTIK to help interpret its brand across a number of events: for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, for Coke's Christmas 2008 effort, and for Ramadan in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Morocco, Tunisia, and other countries with a great many Muslims.
At left is the official Ramadan packaging, courtesy of ATTIK/Leeds. Tell me that doesn't make you feel more pious.
Claussen, which has asked us for years to judge pickles by their snap, takes its chances on online "viral" advertising with this video for its "World's Most Excellent Pickle" campaign.
The premise: a series of "pickle fitness" tests were conducted. The footage was boring, so two comedians were tapped to ad-lib over it, Mystery Science Theater 3000-style. It is not funny, and the sight of pickles being systematically snapped by the accordion-looking machine only left us with a dull, empty ache in our chests: is this our lives?
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
And I like how on YouTube, the video is disseminated by "funnystuff75." Way to be obvious, Mister Obvious.
Imposed on us (and now YOU!) by Draft FCB.
To honor the legacy of John Lennon, Ben & Jerry's have launched Imagine Whirled Peace, an ice cream flavor loaded with toffee cookies and fudge peace signs.
Upload shots of yourself in a peace mosaic at the Imagine subsite. (You know, like the song. Note Lennon specs on twitchy cow.) The ice cream company also partnered with The Lennon Estate and Peace One Day to host a bed-in, nodding to Lennon and Yoko Ono's lavishly-covered bed-in for peace -- a golden opportunity to lie around all day, preach peace, and play King and Queen Meet Lowly Serfs with scandalized reporters and photographers.
More here about how Ben & Jerry's poaches the Baby Boomers by canonizing idols with frozen treats. Frankly though, I've always been the Phish Food kind.
|
|
