Asking for consumer opinions and airing them as ads is super trendy, and Monster hops on the clue train with Monster Works for Me, a campaign running on just about all iterations of traditional media to ask us why we do what we do.
Created by Brand|Content out of Boston, it "recognizes the multiple reasons why people work and the passion that drives them," says agency CEO Doug Gladstone. "In short, no matter what you do, or what you'd like to do, Monster has the tools and resources that can help you find the right match, so you can be successful at whatever you pursue."
While we can't claim it pulls much creative weight it certainly moves the long-dormant Monster in the right direction as people are more interested in what they have to say than what companies have to say anyway. And it definitely helps to play mirror. So cheers to Monster.
AdTunes, the site that tracks music used in advertising has highlighted what it believes to be the Top Ad Music of 2006. From the odd combination of that haunting Gary Jules rendition of Tears for Fear's Mad World featured in the movie Donnie Darko with a Gears of War commercial to that elevator music-ish tune by Royksopp called Remind Me featured in the Caveman Geico Airport commercial, the list brings together some of the best musical choices of the year.
Known for its guerilla marketing magic, the hard-hitting Truth recently got a clue about blogs and started their own on Xanga.com. This is in contrast to the many sites who prefer to blog exclusively on their own servers or homepages, a good move in our opinion because of Xanga's sizeable built-in audience.
The campaign's been around a couple of months and is advertised heavily on Xanga's front page, visible to a serious chunk of the Truth demo as Xanga sits in the top 15 most-visited websites for the American teen demographic (per their own research). Entries range from scandalous calls to action to news on concurrent campaigns like their back hair effort.
We dig the idea but the blog could do with a better writer as the content's a bit dry and hardly does dignity to Truth's razor-edge persona.
Volvo's Free Will campaign is a collage of consumer opinion about its C30 hatchback. While this concept isn't new, airing negative views as adstuff (er, kind of) is.
The campaign also includes video shorts that viewers can rate upon seeing. One features an audience throwing tomatoes and heckling as a burlesque woman unveils the C30 on a theatre stage.
The campaign's gone strong in the UK for a year. Ford global ad director Tim Ellis says the effort aims to get the up-and-coming 25-35 demo to do some thinking about the C30 and develop a relationship with Volvo based more on honesty than is typical in brand relationships. "In research, we learned that people feel as if we are really talking directly to them, so they consume [campaign offerings] and engage [them] differently than other typical advertisements," he explained.
Cheers to Volvo for their bravery. We look forward to seeing how it turns out even if we don't find the C30 that cute. (See? Works on marketers too.)
It seemed like such a good idea in theory.
For client Borders, design studio Firstborn created the Gift Squad, a site that aims to make gift-choosing easier but feels more like a horrifying attack by the characters adults find soothing for children but that actually populated our nightmares.
We dug the idea of an elf-chat. That could work. But Gift Squad asks a bunch of confusing and seeming unrelated questions generated by nothing that appears to be human. And along the way you're bounced across five other vapidly-happy "experts" (the nutcracker, the teddy bear, etc) on this quest that's starting to feel like the search for the holy grail - and all you want is for some human being playing elf to say "I know what to get your mom! She'll love a box of truffles from Borders! Would you like to order now?" or something similarly simple.
Do we ask so much?
How could we possibly forget? We grew up skiing and still do. We subscribed religiously to Ski and Skiing and Powder when it made its entry. We even owned Lange boots but we only have vague memories of the Lange Girls which graced the pages of Lange ski boot ads for years. Perhaps, the parents tore out the Lange ads before we were able to read the magazines. Perhaps we have a horrible memory. Perhaps we were so infatuated with Jonna Lee we didn't have time for anyone else. Anyway, the Lange Girls are back. Or they never left and we never noticed. Now, though, Lange is using female sports figures rather than models such as U.S. Ski Team member Julia Mancuso who's gracing the current campaign.
American Greetings, with help from B.L. Ochman, is running a blog ad campaign on 80 blogs to promote last minute holiday card and family letter ideas. Each of the ads, which can be seen on Cute Overload, Woman Diary, GetOutdoors and others, points to American Greeting example site such as this and this. The campaign is said to be doing extremely well. In fact, we know it is, we just can't tell you exactly how well.
Kevin at PR Blog keeps us updated on that mistletoe demonstration he saw recently. Shortly after our original post DIAGEO expressed concern via e-mail because they worried about kids' exposure to the alcohol-related event.
Impressive follow-up - we remain as gratified with the campaign as we were when we heard about the heckling children.
We're also pleased about finally getting to see the swampy mistletoe man with our own eyes, which was all we cared about anyway. He doesn't much look like he's wearing his favourite suit but everyone else seems to be having fun.
It's sad we even need an ad campaign to tell people how to take care of their babies but that's the mission of a current New York City transit campaign for the city's Administration for Children's Services and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (mental hygiene? that's a new one). Unfortunately, there are idiots in this world that do need to be told some very obvious things about caring for a baby. Trouble is, this campaign seems to confuse more than educate - well, at least to those mentally hygiene-challenged types.
Ironi Sans sent us this video clip of two of the campaign's subway cards placed next to each other. The first reads, "Don't Leave Him Alone." The second reads, "It's Safest For Him to Sleep Alone." That sort of "education" is sure to make a mentally hygiene-challenged person's logic loop explode which is quite the opposite, we're sure, of the campaign's intent.
Oh we just can't pass on featuring one of our favorite, over-the-top Bond girls Zena Onatop aka Famke Jansen who is appearing in a "Be An Angel For Animals" PETA ad. Famke and PETA want us to be nice to dogs this holiday season. The ad, shot by Andrew Southam, was unveiled at an event yesterday in LA at Runyon Canyon Park. So don't crate your dog when you go to the inlaws for Christmas this year. Call Famke and I'm sure she'd be happy to come over and watch your dog.
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