We were somewhere on Rue de Rivoli when we saw a print version of the image at left for coffee label Lavazza. Below the image of a feral woman clad in furs, her body hunched protectedly over two infants, an espresso cup clutched delicately in one hand, reads the tagline: "The Italian espresso experience."
Lavazza is the same brand that did the utterly carnal coffee-bean-grind prints two years ago.
After a bit of Googling we found out the image we saw is one of seven Annie Leibovitz-photographed prints for Lavazza's yearly Coffee Calendar, an artful and sexy tribute to a handful of Italian icons. The image at left is a reinterpretation of Colosseo & Lupa Capitolino and represents the January-February portions of the calendar.
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Handbag designer Rachel Nasvik promotes fresh wares with an urban Quest for ladies that lust for free stuff.
96 of her handbags were hidden in public places around NYC, filled with girly things like lip gloss, bobby pins and personalized playlists; as well as a note spouting the campaign manifesto: "You didn't find this bag, this bag found you." Lucky finders can keep 'em.
Rachel's Twitter is loaded with cryptic clues about where the bags can be spotted; her blog also sports images of discovered ones.
It's telling that eclectic music lover @quikness apprised us of this ad, featuring Dr. Dre for Dr Pepper, with nothing but a sad face. That's pretty much how we felt when Dre gave us his whole "slower is better" spiel -- a philosophy for hip-hop hits and Dr Pepper drinking etiquette.
For Dr Pepper's "Trust me, I'm a doctor!" effort, Dr. Dre joins a colourful list of other non-doctors that made careers out of pretending to be: Dr. Love and Dr. J.
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Cisco's trained us to expect a campy pitch for the ASR 9000 to accompany almost all holidays where we have to demonstrate undying loyalty with cash.
Father's Day is no exception. After giving Dad a pass on every cheap brag and unlikely childhood triumph he's ever told, Cisco poses profound questions like this one:
"...And In what freaking universe would argyle socks be more appealing than six times the mobile backhaul capacity?!!"
Not this one, I guess. That reference to Dad being "burly and barrel-chested" was kind of creepy though, but in keeping with that slightly-violating oddvertising vibe that we're all crazy about right now.
Share the awesomeness! at techedgeweekly.com.
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To strengthen the US Postal Service's online chops -- and give augmented reality technology some bonafide useful marketing implementation -- AKQA/DC developed the virtual box simulator.
Here's how it works: you print a little eagle off the website. (This is so the system knows how big your item is, relative to something else.) Switch on your web cam and launch the Virtual Box Simulator. Hold the eagle up to the camera until a virtual box appears, then toggle the size to best suit whatever item you plan to ship.
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30Rock's Jane Krakowski appears in this tacky ravaging of Gone with the Wind for Breyer's ice cream.
And while we can appreciate the seamless integration of a contemporary (if hardly worthy) Scarlett O'Hara, it disgusts us to no end when she puts on the Southern simper and weds her crappy girls-night-out-fantasy dialogue to Rhett's timeless hot/cold leading man ditties.
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What do Dean Cain, Bobcat Goldthwait, and a rotund man in a silver unitard all have in common? They are all part of Microsoft's latest Internet Explorer 8 campaign developed by Indiana-based advertising agency, Bradley and Montgomery.
If that pitch made you as almost-curious as it made us, check out browserforthebetter.com. Hopefully you'll have better luck than we did: the site demanded that we install Silverlight before divulging anything, and even after that, it still wouldn't relinquish its secrets.
So we had to hit up Ads of the World, where we found out the campaign is coloured by a series of PSA-style "Special Internet Service Announcements" targeted to people with internet afflictions.
So it's kinda like that HANDTOSS shit all over again. Microsoft, how one-trick-pony are you?
OK, so Chicago Lake liquors is an "urban" liquor store with low prices. Why? Because "urban" people can't afford higher prices? Because suburban white people are cheap and have no problem traveling to "urban" space to get their freak on? Because you can never get enough Crystal or Hennessy?
Aside from all those potential cause group-style alarm bells, this campaign for Chicago Lake Liquors from Brew is not afraid to go all Vanilla Ice on us with every over-done white-guy-goes-black tactic in the book.
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We're just waiting for the spoofs on "Break the Monotony," a campaign for SPAM -- yes, the meat whose identity you can never quite peg -- put together by LAIKA.
See "Bored Room," which depicts bread slices in a meeting, falling gradually into comas, until SPAM leaps in, Kool-Aid Man-style, and crashes the party.
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We've heard it said that we'll always be about five or six years old in the eyes of our parents -- no matter how much we accomplish, how old we really get, or where on our bodies our hair starts to grow.
Which is why this campaign for UK-based Fairy hits home in a manner both awkward and charming. Each spot depicts a generic Gen-Xer getting infantilized by his mom, who despite old age (and complete senility?) hasn't lost any of the maternal instincts she possessed in the prime of motherhood.
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