For client General Electric, BBDO New York creates Samurai, fable about a Japanese fluff-ball on whose shoulders is set an Algieresque task to save the world from an evil emperor. With animation by Three Legged Legs, Samurai is part of GE's Imagination Theatre effort which marries the brand giant's proclaimed passion for innovation and imagination. It also serves as an illustrative and musical platform for their most current technological offerings.
The concept brings Toyota's misguided and busy world of Flash to mind, except without the misguided and busy world of Flash. GE also does Suzuki one better by taking the branded film idea and blessing it with their own personality instead of copying somebody else's and throwing in Fast-and-the-Furious-style cast members.
We like it. But who can hate on anime? It's the only sanctioned form of animation that gets to be both adorable and violent without pissing the PC police off. Plus it has ninjas, and we've already established that anything involving ninjas is automatically cool.
VH1's reality series I Love New York gets pretty for its debut with agency Version2, which positions New York as a bachelorette and, in this representative spot, guides Lucy-in-the-Sky-eyed viewers through a menagerie of NY-loving suitors up to a mansion at its heart, where eager young guns will aim for penetration. Federico Saenz-Recio of the "Flavor of Love" series is credited for lead design and animation.
We dig the harmonious marriage between the ghetto fabulous and psychedelic qualities of the campaign, even if we doubt the show will move us education-wise. But hey, reality TV is just another way of saying the consumer is king, so what do we know?
Either UPS has an extremely twisted sense of humor or someone forgot to do their homework. Adrants reader Andrew Teman tells us one of the commercials in the new UPS campaign features a song by the band The Postal Service which, after a dust up with the United States Post Office over its name, sells its CD on the USPS website. The The Postal Service and USPS in bed together, it does seem an odd choice of music to use in a UPS commercial. Are we missing something here?
Spar, a restaurant sitting in a beach in Mumbai, India, recently conducted a guerilla campaign where large clam shells were strategically placed along the shore. When people reached down to open the shells they found a talk bubble ad that says "Looking for Seafood? Spars Seafood Festival."
Definitely something we'd take home to show the natives to demonstrate how much cooler every other country is besides our own. "Even the ads are better!" we hear ourselves boasting before some disgruntled relative bitchslaps us with the very shell we brought to brag about.
Cheers to Spar. It would have been awesome to throw in a plastic Mardi-Gras style pearl necklace, though. You know, make the whole festival idea seem more festive. It's kind of a buzzkill to open a huge shell and have nothing but a piece of paper to show for it. Oh, well. We'd still take it home.
Under the tagline "Milk's favorite cookie," Draft FCB orchestrates a playful set of Oreo prints that illustrate "the dunk aspect of the Oreo twist, lick and dunk ritual and showcases the simple fun that dunking Oreo cookies in milk can bring," says Laurie Guzzinati of Kraft.
Okay. We can't fault Draft for saying "twist, lick and dunk" considering that's exactly what we do when we have the occasional Oreo. But after that lions-fucking insanity, which comes to mind every time we type out "Draft FCB," we just can't keep a straight face.
Packaging Girlhood lists the best and worst 2006 marketing campaigns aimed at girls and their sometimes less-than-savvy guardians.
Worst includes the Dora the Princess campaign for turning an educational show into a stock purveyor of pretty-in-pink stereotypes. The Bratz Party Plane with juice bar also made the cut.
We always thought Bratz' eclipse over Barbie apt. Barbie was inspired by a German doll named Lilli, actually meant for adult males. That our 21st-century improvement over the Nordic sex kitten was a multi-ethnic series of skanks with DSL lips just kills us.
The list for Best include the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty whose crowning glory was the oft-spoofed Evolution ad of '06, and the transformation of Super Mario's Princess Peach into an entity capable of making her own rescues.
So cheers to real girls who say no lip gloss and aren't afraid to stomp in puddles.
You'd think a vehicle mark notoriously known for lacking originality would make at least a slight effort to step their game up if they've got major marketing dollars to throw behind an idea. Any mediocre idea can be prettied-up with cash. Even cutting another project up, tossing it in the air and making it slightly unrecognizable would be fair game, and it would only take five or six more minutes. But maybe that asks too much of Suzuki.
Make the Logo Bigger unpacks a delectable rant on Suzuki Films, a Suzuki marketing effort aimed at inspiring audiences to move from television to the 'net to find out what happens next in a sultry French Connection-style multi-platform drama called "The Briefcase," which suspiciously echoes BMW Films' "The Hire."
"Maybe it's fitting they copied [BMW] since Suzuki is an imitation of a real car," Bill snarls.
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Slapping down over-expectant fiancées, college-bound sons and horse-loving daughters, Titus Cycles claims there are far more important things in life than over-priced engagement rings, stuffy colleges and thoroughbred horses. Namely, over-priced bikes for those who think a perfectly good Schwinn is only good enough for a mailbox. Check out the witty print campaign by TDA here, here and here.
Blurry red squiggles are infected with wit in an episode of Budweiser's weird new Crowntown TV effort. We don't totally get it and even entertain the thought that it might be blinding us slowly, but we can't seem to stop watching. It doesn't help to wonder what passers-by must think as we snicker irrepressibly in front of a monitor of what looks like wiggly Rorschach testing units.
Web Strategiest points our noses toward something a-brewing in Germany. We're not really sure what this thing is as the teaser seeks not to explain but to bewilder and confuse, but with our powerful deductive logic skills we conclude it's some shape-shifting magic widget that will equip Ultimate Driving Machines with Bluetooth, MP3 players, GPS and possibly the ability to sprout wings, fly and slay enemies with lasers from 100 meters or more.
The promo is appropriately called Anticipation On Approach and the slick German masterminds hope to keep us guessing until mid-January. Although we think we'll give our brains a rest and stop thinking about it right now. We're fairly sure that in a year or two whatever fascinating doodad they plan to bless us with will be stock in every new vehicle that slides off the conveyor belt.
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