In the just plain weird category, Southeastern restaurant chain Krystal is promoting its line of Chili Cheese items with a cheesy promotion called "Chili-Cheesification." The promotion includes a series of "copy free" television commercials and a special Chili-Cheesification website, featuring "Krystal Lovers" who are so insanely in love with Krystal and its chili, they have slathered themselves in chili for the the greater good or marketing. On the website, you can watch videos of these "Krystal Lovers" showing their love for chili with a chili slip and slide, a chili-filled pool and a game of chili twister.
American Beauty, American Pie and Six Feet Under actor Mena Suvari will become the new face for non-profit, anti-smoking group Circle of Friends. Suvari, a former smoker and whose aunt died from smoking, will appear in ads for the group.
Explaining her decision, Suvari said, "One of the things you learn being in the public eye is that you have the ability to raise awareness about serious issues, and, in the process, really help people. I've chosen to get the word out to women, especially young women that tobacco is not glamorous - it's addictive and smoking takes a serious toll on your health."
To persuade Mexican men not to illegally consume turtles' eggs which they believe to be aphrodisiacs, the California-based group Wildcoast has launched an ad campaign featuring models with bulging breasts with the headline, "My man does not need turtle eggs because he knows they don't make him more potent." Unfortunately, few women are as hot as those found in models and, correctly or incorrectly, some men may feel the need for a little boost with sexual arousal.
As is always the case with these campaigns, anti-women-as-sex-objects group are speaking out against the campaign. The National Women's Institute, while behind the effort to end consumption of turtle eggs, feels the campaign portrays women as sex objects. But, stepping back for a moment and looking at this from a basic, instinctual perspective, women, for most men, are just that: sex objects. Now we don't mean that in a bad way and before the hate mail rolls in, putting aside the whole notion of human's higher intellectual yearnings, men are innately programmed to be sexually attracted to women. There's no changing that.
This ad (see another here), although created with an unrealistically hot model, is simply reinforcing the natural sexual desire a man has for a woman (yea, yea, there's the whole homosexual thing but that's another subject) and, by association, saying aphrodisiacs are unnecessary. The ad is using basic human emotion to appeal to men's basic human needs to deliver an important endangered species message. Does anyone really think an ad with a bunch of dead turtle on a beach would be more attention-getting?
Last year's cult horror fave, Saw will be followed by Saw II in October. This year's advertising, which features severed fingers, was released without approval of the Motion Picture Association of America which must approve all movie advertising. Saw II movie distributor Lion's Gate Film said, Friday, it would contact websites and request the offending trailer be removed as well as request exhibitors to return un-approved marketing materials. Unfortunately, there's no Undo button on the Internet. You can compare the original photo, easily found with a little help from Google, accompanying this story with the cleaned up version on the official movie website.
If Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has his way and takes over the Six Flags amusement park, he says the park's advertising and marketing need to be retooled and isn't sure he'd keep the famed dancing geriatric, Mr. Six on board in future ad campaigns. Doner Advertising Creative Director David Banta says Mr' Six scores well with moms and teens in consumer advertising awareness studies but Snyder thinks a more direct marketing type approach should be taken. Come on. Say it ain't so. We love the old guy.
We received this last week and thought it was a joke (there was no tagline). Apparently, our viral radar was out of service. Turns out, it's an ad campaign in the UK for the Department of Transport bringing to light the fact traffic accidents are the biggest cause of accidental death for 12-16 year olds. The ad was created by Leo Burnett's Paul Hordan and Angus Macadam and shot by kids on cell phone cameras. After circulating last week online, it aired on television over the weekend. Dramatic stuff.
To promote the new season of CBS Sports' The NFL Today show, Concrete Pictures has created "The Pixel People," a campaign which features a bunch of animated characters in supposedly funny, off-the-wall skits. "The Pixel People" consist of "The Blimp Dudes," voiced by Two and a Half Men's Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, "Footballhead Guy," "The Hippie Chick," "The Yuppie Lady," "The Cheerleader" and "The Football Family." The campaign will air throughout August and September with :10's, :20's and :30's. Spots can be viewed here.
A non-profit group called One Day's Pay, with the help of AIG, Ambac, JPMorgan Chase, AT&T, KPMG and Time Warner Cable along with political leaders and other non-profits, has launched a 9/11 remembrance campaign in New York called "NYC Remembers." The NYC initiative is part of the national One Day's Pay campaign which hopes to establish 9/11 as a nationally recognized day of service, charity and compassion.
Three 30-second television spots and two radio spots, narrated by Gary Sinise, produced by New York advertising agency Cossette Post and directed by Annabel Jankel, are currently scheduled to air throughout the New York City area mostly in prime time slots for four weeks, starting on Tuesday, August 17th through the week of September 11. The spots will appear on cable networks including ESPN, ABC Family, MSNBC and CNN. Time Warner Cable is donating a minimum of $250,000 in free media time, while One Day's Pay plans to spend an additional $100,000 to extend the reach of the television buy.
9/11 family members acted as advisors in the development of the advertising campaign, reviewing the director's credentials, screening the initial concepts, and being on site during production meetings and shoots.
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Dish Network has launched a microsite called TV Doesn't have to Suck with the nifty URL suckfreetv.com. With a couple of spots, a section which sadly demonstrates how detrimental sucky TV can be and a game that lets you suck grandma out of her chair into the TV, the microsite does a good job making fun of bad TV all in the name of promoting Dish Network. The problem is, TV doesn't suck. The argument that satellite TV is better than cable is no longer appropriate if it ever was in the first place. In fact, cable may be better than satellite in some respects when it comes to features like HBO On Demand which, we're told, isn't available via satellite; speedy internet access and the ability to use cheap phone service like Vonage over the cable connection.
That said, the microsite is funny enough except for one major design peeve of ours. We simply do not understand why designers feel the need to un-necessarily alter the size of the browser window, in this case, maximizing it to full screen. Leave that shit alone. Your creative isn't the only thing happening on a person's desktop. The tactic is almost as bad as a pop up.
With the launch of a new campaign, Nike has made official the mini-trend towards celebrating less than stick figure sized woman. Following Dove's much talked about campaign, Nike has launched a series of print ads that celebrates big butts, thunder thighs and tomboy knees. The big 'ol booty is pushing aside the anorexic runway model and Ms. Magazine Founder Gloria Steinem is very happy about it telling Ad Age, "It is a change that women and some men, too have been agitating for 35 years. I spent 15 years of my life pleading for ads that reflected our readers by age, race and ethnicity. We could demonstrate that women responded better to ads that were more inclusive of them, but they just weren't coming." The campaign comes from Wieden & Kennedy
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