Historically shunned but acknowledged more and more every year by car markers is the inevitable fact car accidents happen. Following VW's most recent entry with its dramatic crash ads comes this work (one, two) by Team One and visual effects company A52 for Lexus in which an interesting approach is taken to illustrate the ability of Lexus vehicles to help you avoid accidents. Each of the two spots takes a reverse look at an accident and, through a set change, takes us from the accident to a world in which the accident never occurs.
Recently, the Danish Road Safety Council took a similar but more dramatic approach with a couple ads that reverse the filming of an actual accident. The Lexus campaign imagines a world without accidents/injury because cars are designed to be safer. The Road Safety Council imagines the same thing but by urging people to drive more safely. Each uses trauma to illustrate trauma doesn't have to occur in the first place.
For some reason, YouTube has become a channel through which marketers enjoy teasing us with their upcoming campaigns. More and more, clips of upcoming campaigns are appearing on the video site and now it's Adidas' turn to tease us with its next installment of the Impossible is Nothing campaign. The campaign will focus on how various athletes overcame personal challenges as illustrated through...uh...artwork. OK. Can we just have the full campaign, please? View the teasers here, here, here and here.
If you like the Geico Caveman, you may be seeing a lot more of him in the not to distant future. And no, not because he'll keep popping up in commercials but because he'll be the star of a new ABC sitcom. That's right. Apparently someone over at ABC likes the caveman so much, they want three of them to humorously battle prejudice while living in Atlanta.
Joe Lawson, the Martin Agency copywriter behind the Geico campaign is on-board as a writer at least for the pilot which will even feature a Gieco spokesman. Now that's some serious brand integration.
Product placement is for losers. Getting your ad campaign turned into a TV show is the new new thing. Just think. Now, we can expect TV shows about a fast food worker who dreams he's a rapper married to a bald pop star. Or two closeted gays who go under cover as manly auto mechanics to hide their love for each other from their uptight, Southern Baptist families. Or even an emotional drama about the father of a family of robots who has just lost his job, contemplates suicide and fights to put his life back together for himself and his family. The possibilities are endless. Start submitting your campaigns to the nets right away! They're in a buying mood.
Feel like showcasing your marketing savvy with a public guerilla campaign? Post-Boston, be careful - The People are sensitive of late.
At least that's what Microsoft's discovering with its recent ground-floor attempt to push the Zune.
A blast of music from the tricked-out Zune-mobile sparked sleep-deprived residents in Lower East Side Manhattan, not to drop their iPods, but to seek restitution on a scathing site called Wake Up Microsoft.
To start with, they sarcastically thank the big blue company for their "noise terrorism." Noise terrorism? Is that anything like Lite-Brite terrorism? While Microsoft deserves a wrist-slap for thinking they could start a spontaneous block party, this certainly isn't the only shockwave of moody distaste they've inadvertently triggered lately.
Update: Cliczune's post on the Zune SUV includes the comment of at least one user who wouldn't mind being jarred out of sleep at 3 AM by the system's impressive clarity.
It's easy to criticize an ad that tries to be cool. But when an ad tries to be corny, we're kind of at a loss for what to do.
Corny Moments, a Coca Cola Light spot created by Santo Buenos Aires, can only be described as "an ever-expanding corny moment" according to the eloquent Brentter. We still haven't worked out how we feel about it, but Caterpillars, another spot from the same campaign, gives us chills. Does this mean Coke succeeds?
There's a sense of violation associated with being made to experience a corny moment. It's something we wouldn't wish upon our worst enemies, a stop-the-world-so-I-can-get-off feeling akin to what you experience when someone unexpectedly touches your belly button. It's not cozy.
Spots directed by Nes Buzzalino. The Corny Moments song is by Diego Grimblat Music.
Just what happens when every other agency in a $100 million account pitch, except yours, drops out? Do you open a case of Heineken and celebrate? That's a bit unclear for Berlin Cameron which finds itself in that position right now as every other agency has dropped out of the $100 million Heineken account pitch. Weiden + Kennedy was the latest agency to throw in the towel claiming "a difference in strategic direction" as told to Advertising Age. Berlin Cameron already handles Heineken's Premium Light account but neither Heineken nor Berlin are commenting yet on the status of the pitch.
Promotions like the Carl's. Jr./Hardee's Spicy Buffalo conjure up major differences between Adrants editors. To start with, Hardee's for Steve is Carl's, Jr. for Angela, who is going, "WTF is Hardee's? Talk about a double-entendre!"
It also brings up the gender issue. While Steve can be sold by the buffalo wings by both the blonde (who knows our names!) and the sandwich, Angela can't help thinking, "I'm tired of sexy girls undressing to sell me shit. What happened to the Chippendale market? Doesn't Kasey Kahne want to sell me something? Jude Law? This guy?"
Come on, Carl's Jr. (or Hardee's, as applicable). The ovarian gender isn't all just eating salad over here. We have needs too. Show us some buffalo.
Hi. It's Steve. Angela, Chippendales? They wear Speedos! G Strings! Eew! Make me puke! I'll take a sexy girl undressing to sell me shit any day of the week thank you very much! And what's with the sexy image in your article here? Huh? Huh? Who's perpetuating the sex sells theme now? :-)
Steve - Speedos and male G-strings are the warrior loincloths of today. What could be hotter than a warrior in meat-slaying battle gear? Yeah, can't think of anything, can you? I rest my case.
And PS. Unconditional purchasing allegiance to the prototype Barbie blonde? So passe. I'd venture to call it Neanderthalic, but even the Geico caveman's too cool for that. >=) *Flips hair*
Oh but Angela. We men pride ourselves on our Neanderthalic simplicity. Why bother with all that overly complex emotional stuff that bogs you ladies down when a simple "Dude, we cool" and a busty blond in a bikini will do it for us every time? Simplicity, baby!
I can't beat the simplicity argument. *long pause* Man, losing to you sucks. I think I'm going to head back to my room, cry and listen to Jagged Edge's cover of "All Out Of Love" on repeat.
It's all good. What would Adrants be with out fair and balanced coverage? Oh wait. Fair and balanced? We don't do that? That wouldn't be any fun. And we like fun so we're just going to keep writing about politically incorrect, thong-clad hotties who hate gun control, love suicide, hate PETA (but love to appear nude in their ads), like sex with midgets, think ads that make men look stupid are cool, like to make fun of fast food workers and think kids who get fat at McDonald's is because of their own stupidity and not that or marketers.
We had high ad hopes for Classmates.com. When they started unrolling the "She married him?!" ads we thought, how cute, they're going to play on cliches. High school is rich with them.
But an otherwise promising direction's lost its luster as Classmates.com failed to give us much more than the same pair of ads and the same cliche, both featuring the bespectacled chick we've come to consider their poster child.
Apparently this darling has stopped bringing in the dosh because Classmates.com is going interactive. Here we find their first effort. In line with the nostalgic yearbook photo theme they bring us ... an image jigsaw.
Unless you're Picasso there are only two moves worth making. If even then you're not clever enough to put the pieces together, just follow the green arrows on each square. Try not to blink; you might miss one.
We seem to have a thing for those fake magazine cover ads and it looks like DDB is using the trick as its last stand for JC Penny before handing over the reigns to Saatch & Saatchi who will give us its "Every Day Matters" love. But, for now, it's still "It's All Inside."
In the March issue of GQ, the cover of another magazine, MANdatory, appears complete with manism headlines such as "There, there. How to tell her what she needs to hear" and "Emotions. Could there be more than two?" It's not terribly creative but it does stand out in a sea of messageless, Dolce & Gabanna-like ads that fill the magazine so we'll give them points for that. It did get us to stop and read it.
Alas, the retailer is due for a squishy Love Marks makeover which, hopefully, doesn't try to make the place more than what it is: a moderately priced department store that sells moderately styled items to moderate people. Everything doesn't need to be high end, ya know.
Aware of the average college student's ongoing state of starvation, Kraft puts together University of St. Arvin, where users can auto-generate depressed letters to parents and otherwise scam their way into some Easy Mac.
Our memories of dorm room subsistence are vivid and not very pleasant. We haven't touched Easy Mac since. But even if processed insta-food is behind us, microwaving stuff that shouldn't be microwaved is not.
We're glad we've been given the opportunity to experience this small pleasure from the safety of our own monitors. What can't a computer do for you today?
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