Here's a confusing metaphor. B-list star Kristen Johnston poses as Lady Godiva -- who rode a horse naked through Coventry to win a break on her husband's taxes -- in order to raise awareness about the hazards of horse-drawn carriages.
"Don't get taken for a ride," the ad reads. "Horse-drawn carriages are cruel."
I guess. Good fodder for the portfolio though -- a Maraschino cherry topping fine oeuvres like Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me and Strangers with Candy.
Levi's is Ad Land's Lolita: perennially young, sexually voracious.
"First Time," a spot for the "Live Unbuttoned" campaign, holds that reputation up nicely. In it, two beautiful adolescents stand face to face in the open air, unbuttoning their jeans.
"You've never done this before, right?" she asks.
"No," he murmurs.
"It's my thirty-fourth time." O_O
They volley around a few more cliches: I'm scared. Don't you trust me? Then, after the long unbutton -- what's Levi's got against zippers? -- nuddified boy and girl take hands and leap off a high dock: as good a metaphor for losing your innocence as any.
Pretty work by the would-be John Hugheses at BBH/London. Good media placement, too: I saw it last night during Heroes, which is positively bursting with hormonal tension.
more »
Victoria's Secret Pink Collegiate represents everything wrong (but sellable!) about college: bright-eyed, gum-popping sorority girls that coordinate dog leashes to their shoes, non-merit-based exclusivity (unless heart-shaped hickeys count), high-pitched voices, strawberry blondes, fruity body spray, polka dots, and pink.
Victoria's Secret recently gave unrepresented schools the chance to join the Pink Collegiate Collection -- a pupil-dilating clothing line sporting Pinkified uni logos and mascots. Probably for the above-mentioned reasons, a passel of hackers decided to have their way with the system.
more »
I don't think I could properly describe "Lips" even if I wanted to. It's an ad for Xbox game Lips, which is pretty much karaoke for the Guitar Hero generation. (The microphone's motion sensitive, and you can select songs from your own collection.)
Agency TAG enlisted Tom Kuntz to conceive a strolling pair of lips, singing Take on Me and going about his business. Then he walks into a house party and traipses creepily up the sleeve of a guy who, right on cue, belts out the chorus to A-HA's greatest hit.
I don't know if it's the lips' cheer that got to me, or the natural seratonin-explosion resulting from Take on Me, but this is an insanely infectious spot. We loves it.
more »
Two brothers duke it out in a tandem bike competition pour papa in Stella Artois' "The Race." Hijinks ensue when they drive over a nail and their chances of winning are dramatically decreased.
Instead of trucking on, the boys furtively decide to lift their spirits at a nearby pub. As they wrap their lovin' fingers around two glasses of Stella, they look up at the pub wall and find papa -- right where they need him to be.
"Perfection has its price," Stella smugly reminds us.
A treat to watch, and in keeping the brand's high-brow sense of humour. By Lowe/London and Lowe Roche/Toronto. MPC/London conducted post-production. Props to Brentter for bringing it to our attention.
more »
One of my favourite things to do during down-time is take personality quizzes that aggrandize me in some show-offable way. What movie are you? Which Sex and the City Character are You Most Like? Rate Your Dating Style!
And given how many MySpace bulletins composed of Q & A's with self-excusing titles like "soooo b0red!" or "stolen from sheila" I get in a day, it's clear I'm not alone in this inclination.
Which is why this quiz on TakeTakeTake.ca was so exciting: "What's Toronto's Take on You?" It was like, oh snap, I never realized my city would have an opinion about where I belong in its gleaming array of subcultures and whatnot.
more »
- Tom Messner on web two-dot-oh: "TV was still social medium in 1965 as people gathered around it; nobody gathers around the Internet unless you think that everyone is gathering around it at any time." Read more up-close with Hustle Knockin'. (V-via.)
- Twitter waves $500 million in Facebook stock off the table.
- Montreal-based Sid Lee opens doors where we all wish we could: in Amsterdam!
- "Oh, haven't you heard of Glah-day?" Someone finally speaks out about those Godforsaken Glade Scented Candles ads.
- George Parker will host your Second Life wedding if you promise to pass him some dirt on Enfatico.
- Google lets you customize search results.
- Planning to die? Don't forget to switch on the webcam.
- Shepard Fairey discusses his work and his design agency, Studio Number One, in a video interview.
Or your aquarium, as the case may be. And while those winning numbers fall out of the sky, why not stick the dinette set under them? Fickle Fortune will buy you a new one. Someday.
By Colle+McVoy for the Minnesota State Lottery. The latter hosts a Daily Drawing show every night, which C+M helped reformat: instead of floating ping pong balls with lotto numbers, "viewers now get plummeting cast iron balls."
Who signed off on that idea?
Anyway, the spots linked above are two of 50 (probably equally disjointed) ads shot for the accompanying campaign. So if you're Minne-soootan, expect to see plenty of variants through '09. (Sorry.)
more »
Which makes the reward potential about as exciting as "winning" a class action lawsuit.
This outdoor campaign for ABSOLUT vodka is running in New York and LA. As always, the idea is to tout the superiority of a world where ABSOLUT is boss. Case in point: getting tomorrow's lotto numbers instead of yesterday's.
Yeah, that would be cool. If you were, like, the only person awake in Times Square that morning.
Creative by TBWA\Chiat\Day out of NYC.
The economy shake-up means hard times for everybody, but print news weeklies are probably among the heaviest-laden. Few people are willing to wait a day to see news in print; fewer still have the patience for a week, not when they can load Google News and have at it instantaneously.
In a desperate bid at self-preservation, the LA Weekly has launched "LONG LIVE PRINT." Weeklyites invaded the Detour Festival in Downtown LA to wave signs, distribute bookmarks (cringe) and ink the message onto other people's shirts with a printing press (nifty!).
Other media ran on newsstands and in the LA Weekly itself. See the creative in all its grungy glory:
Cool work by Ignited LA. Painfully valiant though, given that we've never thought much about the LA Weekly, and now we associate it with the struggle of by-weeklies to remain relevant in an increasingly by-the-Tweet kind of world.
|
