It was only a matter of time before a game as fun as Crazy Taxi would reincarnate in ad promo form. That's what Nokia has done for its interactive film/game The Passenger, which is pretty engaging. The music ain't bad either.
You're a driver on the night streets of Paris when a sultry woman hops in and urgently asks to be transported to three addresses. At aid is the Nokia Multimedia Car Kit CK-20W, a nifty GPS-stocked device, but follow directions or your passenger will throw insults at you. Don't you love doing life-saving favours for people who get all bitchy?
The game was put together by the interesting mindfolk at Hyper Happen, Fuel Industries and Karbon Arc, and features footage of Paris shot just last November. Thanks Netanel for the tip. We don't want to sound too excited but this would make a pretty decent (if really, really short) standalone video game. Then again, we're not actually gamers, we're biased ad people, so we imagine actual joystick jockeys are rolling their eyes in disgust right now.
If you like beat boxing, you'll like this new commercial from Nike where athletes' breathing takes on rhythmic form and becomes a creation unto itself. The ad was created by Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai and produced by HSI in Culver City, CA. Not much else to say other than watch.
Adrants reader Marcos Rozen, editor of the Brazilian AutoData, sent us this scan of a Chevrolet ad that appeared on page two of the February 5 issue of Automotive News. In the upper right hand corner of the ad, interlocking metal rings are hanging from a fence. One has to wonder how an ad with imagery so similar to a competitor's logo can make it through the lengthy approval process without being caught. We're thinking someone caught some serious shit for this and furious calls were made to Automotive News asking the magazine to yank the ad. At least we hope so. It'd be sad to think any brand would allow this to happen.
Back in our heady days of diapers, drool and a band known as Jefferson Airplane, Windows Vista was but an inactive brain cell in a small boy named Bill Gates. Today, Windows Vista is all the rage and Jefferson Airplane is now known (has been for a long time) as Jefferson Starship. We have to wonder if back in the good old days of Jefferson Airplane, anyone in the band could have conceived of being an integral component of one of the biggest marketing campaigns of all time. With all those drugs, we highly doubt it but today, what's not to like about a classic (the time, not the style) rock band headlining a concert tour to promote software. A lot but that's beside the point.
The agency with our favorite name, Wexley School for Girls, developed a free lunch concert series featuring Jefferson Airplane, a cosmonaut street team, wild postings, a teaser video and a website filled with galactic goodies all to promote Windows Vista and its partnership with T-Mobile. It's kind of fun. Check it out.
In a new commercial for the newly designed Cherry Coke, Los Angeles-based 72andSunny invents a new kind of downpour that isn't cats or dogs or frogs or anything else we've seen fall from the sky but cherries. Lots and lots of cherries. OK, most of them are digital cherries but still. We think it's kind of humorous an agency called 72andSunny made a commercial that's all about cloudy skies and rain
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Borrell Associates reports local online video advertising will hit $5 billion or 35 percent of all local online advertising by 2012. Just in time for Lonelygirl15's baby to take center stage as the first Pampers YouTube video series. Or ill it be LiveVideo by then?
- Travelers Insurance gets its red umbrella logo back from Citigroup after a ten year effort. Huh? Who knew it was missing?
- Miller has chosen Digitas to handle its interactive work after a review during which Digitas beat out Arc Worldwide for the account which was previously held by Agency.com.
- Remo, a new product from fledgling rations company erinMedia plans to rollout a sophisticated second by second television ratings service and has files many patents to insure it's well positioned to unseat ratings king Nielsen.
- Film makers are taking their movies to the really small screen. Well, at least promotions for those movies.
While artful design is always up for interpretation, some think Google, with its Valentine's Day logo redesign, left the L out of their name christening the site Googe. Likely, as some have mentioned, the stem of the strawberry is intended to be the L but that strawberry chocolate mess looks like one letter to us.
- Wieden + Kennedy London is seeking four people from outside the ad world to partake in its WKSide3 program which offers three month work at the agency.
- PSFK is organizing a future of marketing conference at which the likes of George Parker (now that's funny), Peter Rojas, Elizabeth Spiers, Cunning's Floyd Hayes, Anomaly's Mike Byrne and others will chat about where the industry is going.
- JC Penny Says "Every Day Matters."
- XM Radio does the Valentine's Day card generator thing.
- Suzuki does the webisode thing. Calls it The Briefcase.
We have to admit there's something about Altoids we just like. A lot. For Valentine's Day they've taken their running Curiously Strong theme and added a curiously twisted BDSM thread.
In a dark take on Herbal Essences' bubble-gum anti-Cupid campaign, Altoids embraces Cupid in all his glory ... and gives him a pair of handcuffs. And because ambiance is 9/10 of a good show, they've even opened up temporary Altoids Chocolate Shoppes, prime purveyors of their devilish chocolate mints, with darkened windows and threesomes hidden in the wallpaper. The stores are in NY, Miami and Chicago and will remain open until tomorrow at 10 PM.
Aside from the product there's not much branding going on and the prevalent hearts have slashes down the middle that recall melting chocolate. We are afraid of the (whip-wielding, leather-clad) part of us that says "YES" too readily to this bad-ass positioning scheme, which was concocted by Bigheads Network in tangent with Gigunda Group. All it needs is a cross-brand relationship with Lelo and it'll really be in business.
This new leapfrog ad by GE uses playful animation to marry love of innovation to harmony with the natural world. We think the frog, which echoes the adorable Geico gecko, is a little scrawny for all that hardcore hopping but we like the ad anyway.
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