Once upon a time there was a social networking site called MySpace. Everyone was on it. Everyone loved it. It was the place to be. Then came the pedophiles. Then came the spam. Then came News Corp. Then came Facebook.
Oh, who are we kidding? It's still the largest social networking site in the world. It's just lost a bit of its shininess since Facebook took the spotlight. Well, MySpace isn't fooling around and has hooked up with Google as a premiere supporter of Google's recently announced OpenSocial development platform. OpenSocial hopes to bring some standards to social network development with its open API.
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This gritty new campaign for Pennzoil was put together by TBWA\Chiat\Day and will appear at the SEMA trade show in Las Vegas.
The posters were printed on vintage paper to illuminate Pennzoil's old-school heritage and longtime association with NASCAR. They'll also serve double-time as prizes -- enthusiasts at SEMA will be taking copies home.
Maybe Pennzoil ads are the Leonetto Cappiellos of tomorrow. It's not like valorizing an oil firm is less banal than producing pretty posters for liquor.
The Talladega print is at left; see Indianapolis and Darlington.
We like. Then again, old-looking stuff always feels more substantial, doesn't it?
Time Warner Cable wants you to know it thinks like you think.
(And by that, what it means is, it can take your crappy ideas and turn them into products that sell in the mainstream market.)
The campaign site was put together by Ogilvy & Mather, with casting by sausage. It's actually pretty neat. Click on a character in the suburban setting to see what they've invented to make their lives better, and find out how Time Warner pwned their asses.
What do you get when you mash up the quirky language spots proffered by Berlitz, and self-deprecating animations for Virgin America?
You get Planeguage by Delta. (Or more accurately, by CAA.)
See the spot entitled "Middleman" here.
The music's a little jarring but the scenes -- unrestrained kids, the woman who keeps opening and closing her shade, the little dance you do when you've been holding your pee -- are too close to home not to crack a smile.
Nice to see airlines spending money on advertising again. Now, if only they could pull their CRM act together. Some watchers have commented a company like Delta should hold off on making jokes about their crap airline experience -- when it's you that gets stranded, and you that gets aisle-bumped, you're not laughing.
A cute campaign does not a great experience make.
Okay, this is only slightly horrifying. Watch your friends at eBay kidnap Santa.
This was part of an unbranded guerrilla campaign that went live last week.
The kidnapper's manifesto is stated at Santa Kidnap. Naturally, it's all in our best interest. (Kind of like Abu Ghraib?)
Credits: Total for digital and media work; Tequila for creative (man, we don't like most things they do, do we?); and LAVA comm for seeding.
There's little chance that pomade is going to affect how a member of the opposite sex feels about you. But Got2B claims its new Magnetik pomade and gel are infused with pheromones and scientifically proven to "positively influence the psychology of attraction."
It's more or less like believing underarm deodorant turns noncommittal girls into man-fucking hyenas, right?
Hit the Magnetik subsite, where you can make your own sex molecule. It's not super-exciting but the little bubble noises in the background are fun.
Put together by BBDO West.
Adrants reader Steve from Brand Canada Blog tips us to yet another contextual/text advertising oddity. Squeaky clean Disney site Disney Family has found itself hovering over a video of the stunningly curvaceous and undeniably hot "Andrea" as she fondles her (clothed) breasts, removes her shorts and tantalizingly plays with her thong while swinging her impossibly perfect booty in front of her webcam for horny guys to admire.
While we're sure guys who occasionally get horny and occasionally view racy webcam videos are also be fine, upstanding students, professionals, parents and role models, we're thinking this isn't exactly the mood Disney was hoping its potential target audience would be in when viewing its family-focused ads. After all, moods like horny tend to distract people quite a bit from just about everything except matters directly in hand. A captive audience for sure but captivated by something entirely other than an annoying text ad. Besides, thoughts of family fun aren't likely to be top of mind at this particular moment.
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Eric over at SmashLab thinks Google copied his logo for its new SearchMash offering.
And while some may be quick to remark a font is a font is a font, Eric gets down and dirty, geek-style: "Back in 2000, when we started our firm, we created the smashLAB wordmark.
"It presented a few technical problems, including the marriage of two styles/cases, and an 'h' with an awkward counter and a tricky ascender. I think we resolved the issues well by condensing that counter's horizontal space, cranking the x-height on the lower-case glyphs and a few other tweaks."
Check out the comparison at left to decide for yourself.
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Look: a bunch of women making noises. And they seem to have forgotten their shirts. See more at the Playtex Fits YouTube channel.
One actually pulls a harmonica out of her bra and starts to play it.
Until we did more research, we thought these (bra) ads were for tampons. Boy were we confused.
If you happen to have a funny bra story lying around, you can upload it here.
People like to over-care about stuff. That's why we have the PC police monitoring everything movie stars say, and Arianna Huffington.
But if saving toast seems like too futile a mission for you, try your hand at saving tile.
Save the Tile is a Delta Faucet campaign by Young & Laramore. The idea is to promote quality tile that's aesthetically friendly (so you don't hammer it all away at your first opportunity).
The campaign includes print ads narrated by disgruntled bathroom items. See Scent Stick (who owns these?), Loofah and Toothbrush.
Or, you know, go out and try saving something you actually care about. (Like puppies or hungry kids.) But who actually does that?
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