- P&G and Unilever has decided to sit out this year's Super Bowl advertising extravaganza and will, instead, allocate dollars to other efforts they feel will provide a better ROI.
- Rather than believing its new operating system is good enough to seel itself, Microsoft is serving up a $500 million worldwide waterfall of advertising.
- A "viral" print ad? Yawn. Snooze. Huh? WTF?
- George is right. The five finalists in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl are quite good. Our money is one Duct Tape of Mouse Trap.
- George also thinks he has the perfect replacement for the Maytag Man. He thinks it's Elmo Blatch (real name: Bill Bolanfder), the guy who killed the Tim Robbin's character's wife.
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This past Sunday during Desperate Housewives Rembrandt Oral Care aired a commercial for its long-running and very pretty Brilliant Mouth campaign. It's available on YouTube so you can check it out here.
The use of romance to hawk hygiene isn't new; Listerine has been doing it as far back as the '50's, admonishing conscientious teenage boys to check their breath twice before that big date. And don't even get us started on Lysol, which used to be a douche (the feminine kind, not this kind).
So this is a contemporary take on a very old idea. The imagery is better than in the '50's though, and we like that Rembrandt takes a grown-up approach instead of trying to compete with all those overgrown Crest Kids. We are way over sparkly gum-flavoured toothpaste.
For Valentine's Day Auntie Anne's unleashes a slew of websites into the ether, kind of like Office Max did last December. Each features some weird animation, a video or an invitation to expound on love's meaning. Plus each e-card has a coupon for a free pretzel.
We can think of few things we want more on Feb 14 than supple golden curves so we can hardly complain. And we know people under a budget will probably appreciate the free pretzel provision. The sites for the campaign are:
www.aLoveYouCanCountOn.com
www.FunkyValentine.com
www.CupidsDiet.com
www.LoveIsForTheDogs.com
www.ItWasWorthIt.com
www.aPairOfMonkeys.com
http://www.whatisloveanyway.com/
http://www.shessotwisted.com/
http://www.threedownfouracross.com/
For her 2008 Presidential bid, Hilary Clinton has gathered together her advertising team including GSD&M CEO Roy Spence, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies CEO Andy Berlin and former BBDO Senior Executive Creative Director Jimmy Siegel. Spence is a close friend of Clinton and has known both Bill and Hilary since 1972 and worked on Bill Clinton's bid for the Presidency.
Already, the Hilary Clinton campaign has been seen advertising on blogs through the BlogAds network in an effort to reach the several very powerful political influencers who inhabit that space.
After Bob Garfield demolished them for disseminating unrealistic online puffery, we're impressed by Match.com's latest initiative, which takes a more intelligent approach than vapid sex-obsessed competitor True. The aim is to draw warmth to Match.com from people who still pan online dating as creepy, oversexed or are simply just too shy.
It came as a surprise when we learned not everybody is won by a sex-based approach. What do you mean sex doesn't always sell? Of course it does. That's why the phrase is "Sex sells" and not "Sex only sometimes sells" or "Sex just sells if you're living an ongoing abnormal state of puberty." No. It always sells.
Campaign by New York-based Hanft Raboy & Partners.
To celebrate its quirky Japanese roots Asics presents its Fabre74 Onitsuka model in the style of ad-idolatry: with a 1.5-meter sculpture of an Onitsuka Tiger sneaker made of warring elements of Japanese culture. This is part of Onitsuka's Made of Japan effort, which seeks to challenge ideas about the Japanese pop-world with, uh ... a hodgepodge of its icons.
The giant shoe is a collabo between StrawberryFrog, LA-based artist Gary Baseman, and Dutch photographer Marcel Christ, all of whom are about as Japanese as the little Russian toy who gets excluded from the fun and games at the end of the promo video. The sculpture will appear in print, online and at venues in London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and Zurich.
Not to sound silly (as if we ever do) but we continue to harbor quiet fears about our toys coming to life and tormenting us.
Last October, used car dealer franchise CarMax launched a Boone/Oakley-created television campaign which, among other things, featured a 16 year olf gorl freaking out at her father for buying her a car that was the wrong color. Flash forward to January and a multi-video campaign for Domino's pizza cribs the idea with, yes, a daughter freaking out when her father presents her a car that is not the color she wanted. So much for innovation.
To be fair, the Domino's campaign extended the idea by following the video of the freak out with an apology video from the teen, a video of her explaining she was going to sell the car to someone for $9.99 and - hold your breath - yet another explaining how she got a better deal at Domino's with its Anything Goes Deal.
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The Army/Ad Council Boost Up effort skyrockets in our ratings of deserved abuse with this awkwardly-phrased, melodramatic, grammatically awful and typo-ridden explanation for Boost Up's mission.
We're sure they're sincere in suggesting that inside every one of us is a graduate. But clearly a high school graduate does not a good editor make. Well, guess that's what the military - er, college - is for.
In a world where...on wait, that movie trailer dude says that all the time. But, for once, the phrase can be put to good use: In a world where teens are subjected to an onslaught of "don't" ads (drive drunk, do drugs, eat too much, have unprotected sex, make racial slurs), the frequency of which only a creative reviewing a Cannes reel would subject oneself too, it's refreshing to see a different approach. We're thinking the teens are appreciating it too.
Rather than use scare tactics of meaningless pontifications, this Ad Council campaign called UR the Spokesperson uses humor and pokes fun at the overused and now meaningless scare and pontification tactics that teens are now desensitized to. In the ads, the usual teen foolery is going on inside a moving vehicle but rather than the ads ending in a crash or cutting to a stern lecture, a game show-style announcer hops in the car and asks, "How would you like to save your life from an ugly, reckless driving death?" It then goes on infomercial-style with the kids getting all agreeably 50's-style. It's different. It's refreshing. Whether it works, though, is an entirely different subject.
Following its belief that exposing oneself to great ads from other advertising professionals will better one's own creativity, Ad of the World, with help from JWT Bangkok, has launched a promotional campaign that highlights how copying...uh...acknowledging others great creative will results in great creative of one's own.
To be fair, inspiration is a powerful motivator that fuels creativity. knowing what others have done and why helps align one's own creative thinking and, ideally, fosters new, original creativity along the way. The campaign visually illustrates how exposure to, and mashup of, great creative can produce interesting results. We're not sure about that twisted pig, though. See the entire campaign here.
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